Though a long way from a Luddite, not every innovation replaced what I did before. Email quickly enabled messages. Accessed to excess multiple times daily. Fax, introduced to me by my secretary, became a convenience for her, a burden to me as endless unselected papers arrived. Seeing X-rays on a computer screen, great. Using a poorly designed electronic medical record where checking boxes replaced doing real exams and following up on details of patient histories probably reversed quality medical care in many ways. My cell phone keeps my world in a pocket. For calls, it is a phone, whether initiating or receiving. Its apps, though, rarely duplicate what they replace. Camera not as good as my dedicated digital camera or even my prized Canon AE-1 purchased with my savings as a resident. Flashlights on the phone screen not nearly as effective as a flashlight taken off a shelf, or even a key ring. For tape recorders, I go to my small tape recorder collection, two digital, two with physical tape. Annoyances mostly, but not harm, other than doctors no longer paying as much attention to patients as we should.
Text messaging brings me to harm. No question, they have a place. If a site I want to visit, like my bank or retirement plan, needs assurance that it is really me who opened that financial data, sending me a text message with code numbers adds security and privacy. I solicit those from my sign-in pages on my laptop. I know they are coming. My phone is at hand and I record the number so that I can see my own accounts without anyone else accessing them.
Unsolicited messages sent as texts to a phone pose more harm. My cell phone just stays in my pocket or in a holder in the car. I know the telephone signal and usually answer it. Instant Messaging preys on the addictive parts of our frontal cortex and probably more primitive centers. People at the steering wheel engage in electronic conversations or invitations when they should have their wits attentive to their windshields and mirrors. No FOMO for me. For me, these messages fall beneath email in importance.
Despite my telling doctor's offices not to notify me that way, preferentially giving them my landline as the primary contact, some still bury messages on my phone. Upcoming appointments I can track without their help. Patient portal connected to email handle lab results.
My text messages have become clutter. They are unselected, random, taken from lists. They depersonalize what should be interactive. My last twenty unsolicited messages:
- Political pitches for funds: 14
- Charitable pitch for funds: 1
- Asking feedback on experience with company encounter: 1
- Comment from a friend on Eagles Parade: 1
- Confirmation of autopayment: 2
- Realtor asking about my house: 1
The autopay confirmations could come by email. They typically do. Charitable solicitations come by email in large quantities. Companies or medical facilities soliciting my experience with them usually arrive by email. Comments from friends have a better forum on Facebook. Other than clutter, these harm no one. I cannot say the same about the dominance of political solicitations, both to me and maybe to my party.
As a result of 70% political solicitations, I've largely ignored text messaging for all its purposes. My relationship with my party has changed as well. I suspect the election results shifting to the other party may also reflect that annoyance in a more widespread way. At least the companies that want my feedback convey an impression, sincere or not, that they care what my experience had been. My comments, or aggregate sentiment, could change their operations for the better. That improvement could be better service for me as a customer with other options. It could also be more profit for the company by having happier clients. But at least that company that sought my feedback as text and many more by email, dangled something that might benefit me.
The political parties exist only to benefit the voters by adopting positions to issues we find compelling. They should be the first to care about what their own base thinks. Instead, they prioritize $10 or whatever paltry sum somebody responding to a text message might offer. They pretty much tried to convince me that they are already adequate surrogates for the aspirations that I have. My input to them is less important than my input to my cell phone carrier when I just called their helpline or to my medical network when I just visited one of their doctors. They cannot shake their image of control by elites who direct a phone bank, an impression that in all likelihood is accurate. My vote has a value of $10. I price my visions of optimal political policies much higher than that. They exist to represent me, but overestimate my loyalty. Whether as a customer, patient, or voter, I have my grievances, all legitimate at least in my own mind. My bank, electronics providers, and sources of medical care understand that. They keep in touch. They don't clutter. My governmental advocates devalue me. They make text messaging, which should be a communications asset, largely unusable. And their voting loyalty teeters because of it. They don't seem to be as smart as they claim to be.
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