The Mighty Cell Phone

It's revolutionized our communications, it's changed how we socially interact with each other, and it's even affecting our mental health. Let's talk about it this time on Wie's Thoughts. It's time for a virtual campfire sit down with Terry Weiss. Welcome to Weiss's Thoughts. Hey, everybody, welcome to our virtual campfire sit down. Welcome to another fun filled, star studded, well, all right, fun filled episode of Wiste's Thoughts. I'm Terry Weiss. I'm so glad you decided to spend some of your valuable time with me here on this week's episode of Wife's Thoughts. And remember, visit the website, please won't you Weissthoughts dot com. There you can listen to each and every episode of this podcast. Leave us a review. We really love it if you can leave us a review and make sure you share us with your friends. Also, stop by Purplepit Purplepitstudios dot com. There you can check out other podcasts that are offered and check out the Weiss Life blog. Look for the blog at the top of the page. It says Weis's Life. That's our blog. My blog over there, brought to you by the fine folks at Purple Pit Studios. They let me kind of have that space in the New York and they let me have the space in cyberspace. Isn't that nice of them. They don't charge me in armor and the leg which I greatly appreciate. But anyway, if you want to see me on YouTube, it's Weis's Thoughts. Just search for Wis's Thoughts on YouTube. And if you want to contact me on x it is at Terry Weiss. And don't forget I do voiceover work, audiobook work, commercials, et cetera. YadA, YadA, YadA. I just got done finishing up a project here now too long ago for a nice little little old town in Texas, and uh of an event they're having, which is which they were great to work with, really great to work with. And you can go to Weissproductions dot com. There you can look at some samples of my work and uh there there's all the info on how to reach out to me. Okay, enough shameless plugging of myself before we get to today's topic at hand. On the program, it is, uh, it's going to be you know that time again here for us, So let's do that. It's that time again. It's time for the wordsmith word all the episode. That's right, you can show people your wonderful vocabulary. How big your brain is. It's time for this week's wordsmith word of the episode and. It is called jarity. Oh what is it? One more time? Please? Artificial intelligence, creative voice, jarity, legjarity l e g e r i t y lelegarity, and it is a noun. It means means alert, quickness of mind or body. Let's tear it in a few sentences and how it's used. The kittens played with each other with a sense of legarity. The presenter needed legarity to handle the multiple disruptions to his speech. And one more, my dad. Still shows incredible legarity when he plays with the grand can. All right, this week's wordsmith word of the episode is legarity. L e g E r I y. I think I spelled it wrong. L e g e r i t y legarity, and it's pronounced logarity alert quickness of the mind or body. So now you can impress your friends with your big fat brain and tell him you heard it here on the Weis's Thoughts podcast, won't you please? So let's get into the topic of a hand. Shall we what we're going to talk about this on this episode of Wi's Thoughts, and uh, you know, it's something that we've all well, I would say probably ninety five percent of us, especially in the United States of America, have and we carry it with us. I mean, it's it's like it's like drawing breath for some people. And I must admit, I must admit I use it a lot more than I ever thought I would. And we're talking about the almighty cellular phone, yes, and how it's transformed our lives in so many ways that we never would have imagined. And I can remember when these when these gadgets first started coming out in the late seventies, late seventies, eighties, really started picking up in the nineties, and then once the two thousands hit, it started growing exponentially. With the cell phone, I can still remember my father getting his first quote unquote air quote car phone was hardwired. You actually had to buy the unit, which was like I think twelve or twelve hundred dollars or fifty teen hundred dollars or something. Then you had to take it to places that you know, specialized in installing car stereos and such and what they did is you made an appointment and they hardwired this unit into your vehicle. It was usually hardwired into a console, like the center console of your car. Back in the day, a lot of cars had center consoles, you know, in the middle there the front seat, and it would be hardwired into their hardwired into your your your car's electrical system, and there was an antenna attached to your to your vehicle. Now, some of them started out pretty darn big, and then they got smaller and smaller, you know, within a five days, i say, eight year period the antenna started, you know, getting smaller. But I remember the first one, you know, and it was just like almost like your regular old well for those of you who are listening that can recall that with me. The house phone you had, You picked it up out the center counsole that had to keep pat on it for dialing in a little LCD type screen, and you would hold it up to your ear and it was corded, you know, inside the car. So there was no no such thing as hands free, you know. That came a few years after then there was the bag phones, where you didn't need a vehicle. You can carry around this little suitcase thing here, and it was a bag and you would carry this around and they lasted a few hours. I think it was like maybe four or five hours or something like that, or six hours. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, you can email me at Terry at weis thoughts dot com. But it lastly that I think about four to six hours the battery in this bag and you would carry it around and take it out. A good example of this is watch the original film Lethal Weapon with Danny Glover and Mel Gibson. Towards the beginning of the movie, when you know there's an incident happened anyway, Danny Glover's on a bridge and he's got this bag thing. He's talking on this phone and he's got this little bag thing he's holding in his hand. That was the earliest forms of a cell phone, my friends. Then you got rid of the bag and it was all in one unit. But they were big and bulky. It was like carrying around a cordless phone in your home, the old cordless phones. They were a little bulkier than that. There was no really putting those in a pocket per se. Everyone knew you had to self. It was like all brick They used to call them brick phones. And then things, you know, technologies started advancing, and we went on to they started getting a little bit smaller and more compact and having an actual instead of an LED screen on them, and these LCDs they went to a different type of like one of the first colored phones that came out. But the big thing was when texting started. Now I can remember texting. They used to charge you like twenty cents a text that you got in and out I think it was, or it started a nickel and then it went to a dime. Then it went to twenty cents, you know. And then remember how many of you remember this out there with certain plans like big company like Verizon, remember free nights and weekends, night nights and weekends. Ver Verizon started after nine o'clock during the week and free weekends you could call anybody. And then there was the on the cell phone plans. It was friends and family, so in other words, anybody was on our network, i e. Verizon or whatever company you were with, as long as they had like if it was two AT and T customers calling each other, you didn't have to pay at all. There was it was you know, there was no extra charge. It was just a regular monthly bill, so on and so forth. Now throughout this process. Early on in the cell phone industry, you had to pay for the phone, which you know was pretty exorbitant. You know, the phones were kind of expensive, you know, six seven, eight hundred dollars and they were bulky, and you were then locked into a contract with that carrier for a certain amount of time. You had to stay with them for either one year or two years. They you know, most of them went to two years and made it universal. A couple carriers came out of the woodwork and tried to do the one year. You know, there were companies like in the northeast, you know, and half of New York State or western having New York State, there was Buffalo Cellular, Cellular One, et cetera. But then the big boys started moving in, like Verizon, because Verizon actually started as a home long distance company at a telephone company. Okay, but then they they you know, started they saw the cell phone thing, and they had some forward thinking people there and they really launched onto the cell phone as well. You know, at and T you had you had a Sprint, which is now in the graveyard with a lot of other you know companies that sprung up. Yeah, you know, there's Virgin Mobile. Nowadays, there's so many, you know, different offshoots of cellular companies. Even your cable company is a cell phone carrier. Now you got AT and T, you got Sprint, you know, you got Verizon, you got T Mobile, or you don't have Sprint anymore, I'm sorry, you have T Mobile are the biggest ones. T Mobile and Verizon and AT and T I think are the top three. And then probably your Spectrum or Comcast company, which is offering all phone service, but they piggyback on these carriers, okay, and then you got things like Virgin Mobile, Mint Mobile, you know, all these boost and all these just basically sublet their third party, in some cases fourth party carriers that sublet the airwaves. But anyway, getting back to what we're talking about, you know the impact of this pocket size now technology, because the phone started getting smaller, smaller, smaller, smaller. That was the thing for the wild longest time. But then when texting and the ability with like the advent of the iPhone and the BlackBerry that you could go on the internet, when the Internet started really taking off, and then people said, well, wow, man, I can you know I don't have to carry a computer or laptop around me. I can start doing things on my phone. And then they started developing apps for phones, and then the phones went from being smaller to getting bigger, bigger, bigger, And now we're back to carrying around, you know, billboards some of us in our pockets. It's like, wow, man, you know you might as well just carry around a laptop and put it up to your ear in some cases these phones. But you know, I I must be honest, Okay, I have to be honest with you because you know I don't bullshit on when I talk to you. I enjoy my cell phone. I do a lot on my cell phone, a lot of things, from messaging, checking out social media, keeping in touch with people, you know, looking up information, getting information. You know. I've done some banking over the phone and things like that, you know, on the cell phone, in that encrypted banking, shooting photos, videos, recording audio. There's a lot. Now here's one thing I don't do, but I know a lot of people do, especially the youngsters nowadays, they love to play games on their phone. I'm not a gamer. I've never really been a gamer. I mean I had maybe a short stint of maybe four or five years back in the uh I would say, back in the early two thousands where I was a gamer, back back remember when PlayStation two and PlayStation three. Okay, that yeah, that was my stint into gaming. But then when my kids got older and moved out, the systems were left here and they you know, they didn't take them because they were on the PlayStation four and five and Xbox whatever we're up to on Xbox and everything. I've just never been a gamer now I don't. And again I'm not slamming you gamers out there or anything like that. I mean I've watched some of these new games that they have, and holy macroly the technology on these things. It's mind boggling, you know, it's almost like virtual reality. It is fantastic, And I don't mind watching. Sometimes on YouTube, I'll come across like a channel gaming channel gets suggested suggested in my feed, and I'll check it out for a little bit. I'm like, oh, this is kind of cool, But I mean, could I sit in a chair and play games for eight, ten, twelve hours It's just not me. Hey man, If that's your journey, and if you're good at it, if it's something you joy, or maybe you do it as a hobby or you do it for your job, what have you? God bless you, good for you. You know that, far be it from me to tell you what to do. I mean, I'd rather play music, make audio and things of that nature. And video. However, what an impact now the phones have gotten bigger now. The other thing, The other thing, mind you, is that with all of us carrying around these little portable TV and recording studios in our pocket, we're more conscious than ever of what everybody around us is doing. And I would even dive into the impact of it's affecting our mental health. And you know, as far as a con goes to the cell phones we we have that. It's an acronym called fomo fomo fear of missing out. And I find myself waking up sometimes in the middle of the night that you know, the phones on the on the night stand. I'm like, I mean, who the Hell's gonna send me an email two thirty in the morning, you know what I'm saying. I mean, maybe some crazed individual or some telemarket email marketing company, But I just it's it's almost it's training. It's habitual. It's like, you know, it's the monkey pressing the pillet to you know, pressing the ring and the bell to press the button to get the pellet to eat at the treat, you know, or the dog or the gerbil, whatever animal you want to use. We're trained. And a lot of times we're disconnecting a lot of us. And I've found myself doing this a lot of times too, and I've really had to make a conscious effort not to. We're disengaging from the real world to live inside our cell phones, to live in the virtual world, you know, to live in our our phone, and what's going on? Who's you know, most people, they did a survey amongst the youngsters, they don't prefer to talk on the phone anymore. They'd rather text. Now, there's a lot of context that you lose in just words. I mean, unless you're writing the great American novel, you're the next uh you know, Henry David Thoreau or you know, William Shakespeare. A lot of us are here art and a lot of context gets lost in wording, and a lot of misunderstandings and a lot of uh, you know, miscommunication. Dare I say poor communication, But when you're speaking with someone, whether it's face to face, around the phone, I think there's a closer bond as far as communication there goes. So you know, it's it's it's central. The cell phone has become central to our modern world. It really has. I mean, now here's a couple of good things though about having a cell phone. You're driving on a deserted road, as long as you've got cell coverage, God forbid. Is if you break down, you've got a way to contact someone for help. I mean in the olden days when I when I grew up in the olden days, you know, if you were out in a rural area and you broke down, you better pray there was somebody around or a town you could walk to because you were shit out of look as they say, so ol and you know, so that's a good thing. If you see something happening to someone and you need to contact the police right away. This that's another great reason to have these portable studios and cameras and video cameras and audio recording devices and communication devices in our pocket easily at hand, to contact authorities, to report things, to document things, of that nature. That's a good thing when it's used. Now let me say this with a disclaimer, when it's used properly. I'm not talking about you ding dong influencers out there, and you know who you are that stage crap and you know, we all know who they are. These people that do stuff to irritate and piss people off and then act like, oh my god, where used the man? You know, these people that you know try to dupe people and and you know, just to get reactions out of them and stuff like that. You know, because there's not a knuckleheads out there. I mean, you know, at the end of the day, I guess if we think about it logically, okay, at the end of the day, if we really just and I know some of us, there's a lot of people. I know, you my listeners, you're logical, you're good people. I know that, okay, But there's a lot of knuckleheads out there that don't know basic common sense if it came up and slapped them alongside the head, or as my grandparents used to say, you don't have enough sense to get out of the rain. Okay, I mean, you're stupid. If but if used properly with some common sense. The cell phone is without question, undeniably, undeniably a benefit in society. There's so much. I mean, you can get up to the news, sports, whether information, communicate with anybody around the world in an instant You have the world wide web of information. We have all the information we could ever want or desire, and anything that continues to evolve. We can listen to audiobooks, podcasts, we can watch video, we can watch movies, we can make our own movies, make our own audio, communicate with ones we love, et cetera. It can be such a great help to society. But the quest the caveat my friends, the point is that it has to be done with common sense in mind. And that's what I have to say about the almighty cell phone. Hey, thanks for listening to the program today. I truly appreciate each and every one of you out there, and remember to see it change in the world. You have to be the change in the world you want to see. It all starts with you, the person looking back at you in the mirror every morning. Remember to be kind to yourself, be kind to others. If you want to tweet at me on Twitter, it's at Terry Weiss. Stop by the website Whis's thoughts dot com just to make sure you spell my name right, wys Wiys's thoughts dot com, and hey, leave us a positive rating and review on your favorite podcast provider. Won't you tell your friends, tell your family, tell your pets about White's Thoughts, and I look forward to gathering yet again around the virtual campfire with you real soon. Take care there there were at astan