As IF Times

Source: You can use Alexa to send SMS messages now, if you’ve also got an Android phone – The Verge

It all started with the TV remote.  When the television was first invented, it represented a significant milestone in the way that people consumed their entertainment.  It quickly supplanted all other forms of household amusement to be the premier mode of distraction for the modern home. Television obviated the need to read books which required the onerous and repetitive task of turning pages.  It also put aside the need for people to think, but that’s a topic for another discussion.  When someone invented the TV remote, the appearance of the couch potato soon followed.  Now it was no longer necessary to travel the 6 or 8 feet to turn the channel; all that was required were  hands with opposable thumbs.

Fast forward some 70 years to our modern time and we find that there is a never ending wave of inventions, discoveries and ideas to make our lives ‘easier’, more ‘efficient’ and just generally better.  Some are admittedly ingenious, such as the vacuum cleaner, flush toilets and of course, rolled toilet paper. However there have been  many inventions that are frankly in search of a need, such as flavored diet coke, the X games and of course, selfies.

After TV, the smartphone has had the most significant effect on society.  The proliferation of smart phones has impacted the human experience in two visible ways, both having to do with expectations.  The first is by creating a society where expectations and comparisons are foisted upon people by their inclusion (or not) in social cliques; with people they don’t even know, by virtue of social networking.  The second is by creating the illusion of convenience via all kinds of phone apps.  As we know, there are apps for most anything ranging from the very useful, such as your horoscope,  to the truly picayune, such as other people’s horoscopes.

But it’s not just phone apps.  On a regular basis, there’s revelation of some new invention that truly pushes the horizons of human laziness.  Think of the trend for self driving cars for instance; as if taxis didn’t already exist.  Think of Tinder; people are too lazy to go out to meet someone; they just move their finger on a screen like ordering a pizza.  There are apps connected to services that send entire meals to your house for those too ‘busy’ to cook.  As if anyone’s that busy or important.

One of the most popular gifts during the recent Christmas season were those devices such as Google Home and Amazon Alexa that aspire to be the home’s  information and control center.  These machines allow users to call things up on demand just by issuing commands from across the room.  As per the linked article, these things are even able to send text messages for you, eliminating the need to actually move your hands to fiddle with a phone.  With ongoing inventions, man is evolving from a couch potato to a mashed couch potato.  We’ll put a twist on that famous quote attributed to H.L. Mencken about the gullibility of the American public by re-stating as, “nobody ever went broke betting on the laziness of the American public”.  I’m not convinced man is moving forward if flicking fingers is the prime social skill.

Source: ‘American people turning against Trump-hating celebrities’ | Daily Mail Online

The day after Donald Trump’s State of the Union address, accolades are being received from many quarters of the public including some heretofore skeptical news outlets such as CBS.  Of course, this excludes that segment of people who have been hard wired to despise anything that Trump does; much like an old weather vane rusted in place to always point south.  The Democratic party will not even pretend that they are on board, choosing to obstruct, regardless of policies that would be benign to their constituents.  That’s expected.

But the most visible, vocal and annoying are the usual cabal of nutters and self important ‘entertainers’ and media personalities who feel that their skewed views should be accepted by a sane public.  Actually, that’s not even correct; there are no values that they support, they’re just protesting anything Trump.  They maintain their program of shrill protests and infantile bleating even as the general working public begins to finally see past their charade of righteousness.  Apparently some of the celebrities are so distressed that they’d require a doll to show where they’ve been hurt.

This phenomenon of self importance is to some degree a function of the industry in which they work.  It’s an industry of delusion and make believe.  They are used to having people fawn over them for their great ‘work’ and confirming their importance to both themselves and to the world.  In an industry having no shortage of egos, they come to believe the accolades heaped upon them.  They believe their own fake reality, convinced that having some fleeting moments of fame endows them with the wisdom to be arbiters of social justice.

The jig may be up.  When the positive effects of the economic and social programs forwarded by the Administration become apparent to the population at large, they will compare what the entertainers bleat versus what they see with their own lyin’ eyes.  At that point, the line between reality and the fake world professed by the nutters will be apparent and hopefully we’ll hear less from them.