7 Tech Questions

I’d like to share some of my comments/ questions about technology. Feel free to post your responses as a comment and/or add a question of your own! (We could fill this out to 10 questions easily...)

1. I was on a low-budget international flight the other day and every “extra” needed to be pre-booked and pre-paid. The guy next to me chose the personal entertainment system but had nothing to eat for the 9 hours 11 minutes onboard. (I would have died of starvation before dying of boredom!) Just wondering, if you had to choose between food or entertainment on a long flight, what would you pick?

2. About TV.... Do you still watch it? If so, what do you watch? Are you an unashamed consumer of pop TV or do you pretend you don’t have time for trash?

3. In Cambodia some of my friends have been known to swap their mobile phones with a friend/ girlfriend/ boyfriend for a day or more. (I’m not really sure why...maybe it is trust thing?) Could you swap your cell phone with your friend for a day?

4. To continue with the theme of phones... I read somewhere that the greeting “hello” only came into common usage after the introduction of the telephone. (One of the alternative suggestions for greeting people when this new technology came out was “ahoy”!!) Three questions: Do you actually answer your phone or do people usually have to leave a message? If so, how do you answer your phone? Do you think there is still hope for a revival of the word ahoy?

5. A couple of people have told me recently that with facebook, skype and texting, they don’t use email for anything except work. Interesting. Is email just not fun enough anymore?

6. Air travel. After my accidental flight to the Sunshine Coast instead of the Gold Coast, I had to catch two buses and a taxi to get back to arrive at my intended destination. It cost me more than the initial air fare. So I’m wondering if flights are just too cheap? Too easy? But then, as our friends and family scatter across the globe we have travel further if we want to keep in touch. My question: How many of your close friends do you need to get on a plane to visit?

7. Finally, I remember the pen license fiasco of fourth grade. At the start of the year our whole class switched form using pencils to pens. Within weeks our teacher decided this was a bad idea. Her eight and nine year olds simply didn’t have the handwriting that she expected from children entrusted with a pen. We had to revert to using pencils until our teacher decided our writing has good enough to receive our pen license. It could be revoked for continued messy work too. Oh the shame! Some kids were stuck on pencils for months ... Yet in our type/ text/ digital culture I wonder how many of us can boast of neat, consistent handwriting? Putting it simply, I wonder: Would my fourth grade teacher have to revoke your pen license?