[lbo-talk] Smart about smartphones?

[lasko]

On 6/4/12 7:41 PM, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> On Jun 4, 2012, at 6:17 PM, 123hop at comcast.net wrote:
>
>> If you're in a strange city, a smart phone is a great blessing being at once a map, a phone, a camera, and a mobile, lightweight computer.
>
> In a strange city? I do that at least 10 times a day in Brooklyn.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/opinion/sunday/the-death-of-the-cyberflaneur.html 
:


> the whole point of the flâneur’s wanderings is that he does not know
> what he cares about. As the German writer Franz Hessel, an occasional
> collaborator with Walter Benjamin, put it, “in order to engage in
> flânerie, one must not have anything too definite in mind.” Compared
> with Facebook’s highly deterministic universe, even Microsoft’s
> unimaginative slogan from the 1990s — “Where do you want to go
> today?” — sounds excitingly subversive. Who asks that silly question
> in the age of Facebook?