New Service from Sprint: Babysitting
Sprint announces that parents can now know the location of their child by accessing the GPS unit built into any one of the 30 Sprint/Nextel phones already on the market for the low low price of only $10/month!
Hold up cowboy.
When parents started buying their teenagers cell phones, the excuse for this luxury was to “always know where little Johnny is!” Initially society scoffed at this frivolity but as the price of phones and service kept dropping, it became common place – expected even – for teens and even pre-teens to be armed with the latest in wireless devices.
Now though, and according to Sprint, the ability to call (or text because omg idk n e 1 who calls n e more) little Johnny isn’t sufficient in letting you know where he is! So for only $10 I can know my child’s current and previous whereabouts? Hells yeah! Now I can ignore my kid even more and pay less attention to what he/she/it does! Rawk!!!!1
There in lies my problem with this. I don’t care about the technology to track people. As a geek, I actually find that pretty awesome. My problem is that parents are taking less and less responsibility in raising their children and relying more and more on technological innovations such as this to do their job for them. I guess what I’m trying to say is that it seems to me that parents have become lazy. Why actually “parent” your children when a TV show, a DVD player in the car, or now a GPS unit in their cell phone can do it for you?
Parents, listen up. If your child can only be relied upon to be responsible when they know you have access to their every move, they aren’t truly being responsible. If you haven’t instilled in them the appreciation of trust by showing them that you trust them to go out, do what they say they’re going to do, and be back when they say they’ll be back, then how will they develop trust in others or more importantly be trusted by others? Trust has to be a component of parenting, if it’s not and you only parent by boundaries such as this, children won’t develop the responsibility necessary to function in the real world.
I fear we are breeding a generations of nimrods. You think the current class of politicians up there are morons and just fucking everything up? Just wait until little Johnny and his classmates are responsible for voting and making decisions, then you’ll really see incompetence at its best!
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May 23rd, 2007 at 4:57 pm
Just another example of people not really wanting to be parents. Let me pay 10 bucks a month to know where my kid is! Thank you mighty company!
God I can’t wait to have normal kids.
May 24th, 2007 at 3:42 pm
And then parents wonder why their kids turn out like shit… pathetic.
I can wait for you to have kids, normal or not.
May 25th, 2007 at 8:34 am
I too am in the waiting line
I’m waiting for the “self-funding” kids.
You do realize that parents still have to actually check this gps thing, which will take entirely too much time out of their busy lives that are all about them. I can hear some parents now saying, “Well I thought it would just tell me where my kids are, pick them up, feed them dinner, and do my job…I’m very busy you know.”
Who knows if my kids will be normal, but they sure as hell will be parented. By us by the way, not a string of babysitters and daycare centers. But again, self funding…
May 25th, 2007 at 8:58 am
Rumor has it they’re working on those services for the new version… available in time for Christmas!
June 5th, 2007 at 8:17 pm
I think you’ve missed a point here, dpb, and its a big one. What you have failed to grasp is this is just the “smarmy, feel-good” way to introduce a hideously invasive device into your life.
You see, the ability to track where that cellphone is located is in EVERY cell phone. Much like the ‘black box’ in your car, this is another way of the government (The Man, Big Brother, etc, etc. ad nauseum) to monitor what you do and use it against you.
I’m sure you know that truckers have satellite tracking. Its not there to help the driver if he’s lost, it’s so the companies know what they are doing and where their trucks are. Ok, that’s their property, but it was only a matter of time before simple triangulation was used to determine that Bubba behind the wheel could not have traveled that many miles without averaging 87.3 miles per hour and therefore broke the speed limits in every area he went through. Sure, we all laughed, until the company fired him…and then the police made a move to request access to this information during their routine inspections at the truck stops. See where I’m going?
Now the black box in your car works the same way. It records what you are doing and when and the information is robust enough that they can tell when you’ve exceeded certain speeds and for how long. This was done under the guise of “better service/service history” but in the case of an accident, it is being used (by insurance companies and attorneys) against you. For example, if you have a warranty issue and the box is read, they may deny your claim for repair based on the info that says you exceeded 90mph for 2.10 minutes which is advised against in your manual. You can’t lie…
An insurance company may say that your rates have to be increased because even though you haven’t received a ticket, the data in the box reveals that you have exceeded the speed limit in the area of your residence.
An attorney may subpoena the info on that box to determine that you actually hit your brakes 2.6 seconds later than you thought you did and therefore you did not actively try to avoid the collision and therefore you are partly to blame for the accident and therefore too, barred from recovery. Do you see where I’m going now? For your non-car people, this started with OBD-II which became active on EVERY new vehicle sold in the US since 1996.
Back to the cellphone GPS: did you notice the On-Star (easily the most intrusive device currently in use) commercials. They can run a “diagnostic” (ie know what you are doing) while the car is RUNNING and you are driving it. They know your exactly location and how fast you are going. They could unlock your door….or LOCK it. Think about it….
I’m sure you are aware that repeat DUI offenders often have those starter-interlock systems added to their cars. They give a breath sample and if not DUI, the car will start, otherwise, they are SOL. That device is connected to the car’s computer. There are already active lobbyists demanding that this be part of EVERY car. Then they could program it so you couldn’t have a chocolate rum ball and be able to start your car. Also, that data is held in the unit and they can retrieve it anytime they want. Now you see where I’m getting …
They pitch these invasive devices as helpful, safe, caring, for your own good, for everyone’s good. That’s the way to desensitize people to how really insidious they are.
In the time it took you to read this, DARPA read it, your email, got your email addresses, IP, phone number and cross-referenced each of us against their databases and have updated their files on us. Make sure you don’t give the finger to any red-ligt cameras…that really pisses them off and I guarantee you, shit will happen to you.
All of this under the fucking lame-ass guise of “for the children” and the brain-dead breeders who swallow this shit help each day to undermine our freedom and make it easier for us to be controlled by our own government.
Just know what you are really dealing with here.
June 6th, 2007 at 5:25 pm
Yeah, you’re right CCBS. And it all starts with dipshit parents too dumb to teach their kids responsibility as well as every other important value out there. Every generation is now dumber than their parents. This ignorance will lead to the demise of our society and the complete control and knowledge of our personal habits of which you speak.