The ever-growing world of apps and the QR Droid

The old idiom, ’you learn something new every day’, is true. The older I get, the more there is to learn every day, not less. The world of computers, smart phones, tablets, e-books and a myriad of other new gadgets ensure that this is the case. The advances and updates keep me quite occupied in my free time. The world of ‘apps’ by itself is overwhelming. I’m always rather surprised at how many apps there are out there whenever I use my smart phone to download yet another free app. New ones every day—some of them useful, others not. But I downloaded a rather useful app today, the QR Droid, after having been to the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art here in Oslo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrup_Fearnley_Museum_of_Modern_Art) for the first time since it opened in its new location at Tjuvholmen on the Oslo waterfront. My husband and I went to see an exhibition called Untitled Horrors by the American photographer Cindy Sherman. Fascinating exhibit, well-worth seeing, sometimes bizarre, often unsettling, overall mesmerizing. What I noticed as I was walking past the photos was that many of the photo descriptions included a quick response (QR) code, and that some spectators were using their smart phones to scan the codes that then connected them to an online site that provided information about the photographs. Very smart, as it obviated the need for museum headsets that provide the same thing; at least that is what I assume was the case, since I didn't have the necessary app on my smart phone to try this at the museum. The museum provided free Wifi and a passkey on the entrance tickets. I’ve seen these QR codes many times before, but somehow had not gotten around to wanting to understand their utility until now. Although I have registered that shopping discounts and coupons are available for those who can use this system. Perhaps not completely fair to unenlightened shoppers, but there will be fewer of them as time goes on. The QR Droid app, besides allowing your phone to read a QR code, also lets you create one. I’m not sure yet how that would be personally useful, but I’m sure it won’t take me long to find out. I just checked out some customer reviews of this app, and one of them mentioned using it to create a QR business card. Others mentioned using it for web links and contact details. I see the potential. As I said when I started today’s post, you learn something new every day. That’s what makes life interesting. 

As an addendum to this post, I just tried creating a QR code for my blog, A New Yorker in Oslo, and it worked. Here is the QR code for those of you who would like to try it:

Smart phones, not-so-smart people

Today’s Aftenposten newspaper ran an article about the use of smart phones here in Norway. According to the article, 57% of Norwegians over the age of 16 have a smart phone, 93% of all Norwegians have internet access, and nearly three million Norwegians use Facebook (TNS Gallup statistics). But the article didn’t focus on the usage statistics; it focused on the growing addiction of smart phone owners to their phones. One of the managers at the National Theater was interviewed, and she meant that the addiction was becoming a problem for the theater because the users were looking at their phones throughout performances and disturbing the people around them because the light from the phone is so bright. I quote her (translated from Norwegian): ‘We have had nights where so many people in the audience have had their phones on during the performance that it could have been New Year's Eve’. I call this the height of rudeness.

The advances in computer and phone technology just during the past ten years have been pretty amazing. I understand the fascination with all things new; I also understand how important it is to keep up with the pace of modern technologies. If you don’t, you’ll end up lost and exiled to the outskirts of modern society. I do feel sorry sometimes for elderly people who haven’t kept up or who haven’t had the chance to keep up—who may feel overwhelmed and confused and who wish the world was still as it was thirty or even twenty years ago. But it’s not. I want to keep up and I have kept up. We are fast approaching a world where most ordinary things we do will happen online—from banking to shopping to trip reservations as well as a myriad of other things. It is already that way to a large extent. I don’t have a problem with any of this. I love banking online, for example. We have two laptop computers at home, I just bought an iPad2, we bought a big flat screen TV a few years ago, and I own a top-quality digital SLR camera that I use quite often. I don’t own a smart phone, however, and am not sure I will buy one now that I have the iPad.

However, as much as I use and love all the new gadgets available, I also know when to put them aside for the most part. I know I am not addicted to any of my gadgets, although I can overdo it a bit at times with snapping photos. I do on occasion use a lot of time on my laptop; especially during the evenings when I use it to pursue my writing and photo projects. What I can’t understand is the point of being on Facebook for hours at a time or of sending hundreds of text messages or emails. So I can’t really relate to the addiction problem. I can go to the movies, the opera, the theater, or out to a restaurant and leave my cell phone at home. It has happened. I don’t miss it. I usually have it with me, but when I am together with others, it’s off or silenced, ditto for being in a theater. I don’t need to be constantly conversing with other people, on buses, trains, boats or planes. I don’t walk behind other people and make them nervous by chatting on phones they don’t see. When that happens to me I feel like I am being followed by crazy people talking to themselves. I don’t need to check my emails constantly, so I don’t need to be online constantly. I write this blog but I don’t need to check it constantly either. And as time goes on, I know that I will organize the free time I treasure even more optimally than I manage to now. That will be because I don’t want to spend all my free time writing on a computer or connected to some gadget, updating the world constantly about where I am, what I am doing, or who I am together with. That is because I value my private time and my private life. There are many things that no one else except those closest to me will be privy to. That’s the way I want it.

I find it sad, apropos this newspaper article, that so many people are living online rather than experiencing the ‘now’. The now is all we have. Think of what they’re missing. I would rather be together in person with a friend and enjoying an evening talking and relaxing, without having to check my phone every ten minutes. It’s rude to do that—that’s the way I grew up. I can hear my mother’s voice in my head saying something to that effect. I have seen enough people sitting together at a restaurant table, and each of them was texting messages to friends or family that were not there with them, ignoring the others at the table. More rudeness. I attend professional meetings that are constantly interrupted by emails and phone calls. It is difficult to pick up the thread and to go forward with the meetings after four or five of these kinds of interruptions. I’ve been to lectures where many in the audience are using their laptops and smart phones to check their emails and/or to edit their own lectures or reports. It’s become a brave, new, rude, socially-unintelligent world, despite all the gadgets that can socially connect us and which should be used intelligently. I would always choose the personal connection over the gadget or social media connection. I appreciate what the latter have made possible for me, the ex-pat who lives across the pond from her country of birth, in terms of keeping in touch with family and friends, but give me the in-person experience of being together with them any day.