putting the genie back in the bottle
Someone pointed out to me t’other day that the most innovative advancement of their shiny new iPhone8 was that they were able, via a special pad, to experience wireless charging as opposed to going through all the hassle of…er, plugging in a cable. At the risk of pointing out the blindingly obvious that, with the pad still needing to be plugged in you can still only charge the device in one place, are these marginal, and seemingly irrelevant, advancements what we’ve come to expect from technology? It reminds me of Idris Elba’s shameless SKY Q adverts where he uses all his undisputed acting talent to convince us that we need to be able to simultaneously record seven channels whilst watching an eighth. Anyone who is recording such a quantity of quality TV with the intention of watching it at a later date, truly has no friends, no life and is an inveterate insomniac. Springsteen had it nailed with 57 channels and nothin’ on.
Your new phone is not your friend. And neither is it smart. Having to plug it in, needing to talk directly to the guys at the take-away, remembering your security pin, waiting until you’re home before updating your FB profile, represent no hardship.
On a related note, several of you may have noticed that, perhaps following the lead currently being set by France’s President Macron, our government has mooted the possibility of banning mobiles in schools? Wee Tom, being a History teacher in an estate-based secondary modern, follows his school’s policy that they are allowed into school but, if seen out during lessons, they are immediately confiscated and returned at the end of the school day. However, notwithstanding the attractiveness of this week’s angry birds or next week’s Fortnite craze, or the need to be in the right clique, the real damage in class is done by the constant interruptive & disruptive nature of the beast. Even when concealed, the lure of the device is all-pervasive and the expectation of distraction is its own distraction: the twitchy, addictive, sleep-deprived half-attention it spawns, diminishes both the ability of the school to teach, and the pupil to learn.
With the power to make supposed grownups behave like petulant children it’s obvious real children have less defence to the thrall of mobile technology. Yes, there will be practical difficulties in the implementation of mobile-free zones but these are not beyond the wit of man and mobile devices need to banned from our hallowed halls of learning.
