Well, he's at least half right - wireless and mobile are in fact being used to waste an astonishing amount of time.
At a recent commencement address at Hampton University, the President of the United States said: “With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations – none of which I know how to work – information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment – rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation. It is putting new pressures on our country and on our democracy.”
While I suspect this speech was, as are most from people at this level, ghost-written, and, I suspect, the President really does know how to work the devices he mentioned, I found this message to be quite interesting, coming as it does from someone whose campaign team relied so heavily upon, and truly profited from, the Web to win election. Apparently, reading, watching, or listening to political rhetoric isn’t a distraction or diversion, but “Obama – The Video Game” or Obama on Facebook might be.
I want to point out here that, in general, I like the President. He is way better than the last guy to occupy the oval office, that man being so criminally stupid that he belongs in a prison cell, replacing the now-deceased Robert McNamara at the top of my these-guys-belong-in-jail list. That being said, I agree with almost none of the President’s policies, from Afghanistan to healthcare to taxes to bailouts. But while we can question his strategy, tactics, vision, and objectives, unlike the previous dolt, no one can question his intelligence. At least he’s trying to make a contribution.
Be that as it may, what is the President actually saying here? Well, not much, really, but I think that’s because the speechwriter dropped the ball (just look, for example, at the indeterminate use of the word “it” above), and the President likely had too much on his mind (too often the norm, I suspect) to seriously consider what he was about to say. But the spirit of his words, I think, is that too much potentially productive time is being spent on mindless entertainment and that should not – indeed, for the sake of the future of country, must not – be the case.
I’ve previously likened so many applications that consume compute cycles on handhelds and vast amounts of wireless bandwidth to the screensaver – a pretty-much useless (today, anyway) diversion whose real value is in empowering users to actually make something (again, mostly useless) happen, thereby contributing to the (also mostly worthless) self-esteem-driven ethos that pervades our society and rewards just showing up at the expense of actually making a contribution. Too many people, IMHO, set their goals far too low and settle for keeping up with trivialities, again at the expense of true self- (and, consequently, overall societal) improvement. And many of these folks spend far too much time as drones in marketing campaigns for products and services of little (again IMHO) value. So, in that sense, I agree with the President wholeheartedly. Making people feel important via inherently meaningless activity so that others can profit – what a plan! But then, who cares, as long as we sell more handsets and wireless data plans? The old saying never confuse activity and progress is appropriate here. We’ve got real issues to address, as a society, country, and planet, and a lot of time is being wasted, IMHO, and the President’s, on crap. In short, isn’t there a better way for the most valuable commodity on this planet, an individual human being, to spend his or her time?
On the other hand, given the state of the national debt, and rising taxes – both of which the President could do something about – working more and producing more, or even just thinking more, may not be a good use of one’s time, either, given the low ROI and poor risk/reward ratio. It has been theorized that we are really in control of only our money and our time. I’m not so sure about the money, but re: time, yes, better decisions could indeed be made – in my, and the President’s – humble opinion.
