Telephone | Our Distracted Minds | 3

American Innovations

Wondery

Steven Johnson, History, Kids & Family, Education For Kids, Science

4.6 • 4.1K Ratings

🗓️ 10 December 2020

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Alexander Graham Bell wouldn’t recognize the telephone today. Our phones allow us to keep the internet in our pockets and offer an endless stream of information and entertainment. But they're also altering our society. On this episode, Steven talks to Dr Larry Rosen, co-author of “The Distracted Mind: Ancient Brains in a High Tech World,” about how smartphones have impacted our lives.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to American Innovations,
0:03.6	Add Free on Amazon Music, download the app today.
0:07.0	From Wondery, I'm Stephen Johnson and this is American Innovations.
0:38.0	We ended our series on the telephone with the death of inventor Alexander Granville, way back in 1922.
0:45.0	And as you know, so much about the telephone has changed in the intervening hundred years.
0:51.0	We've gone from landlines to car phones to flip phones to blackberries to the iPhone and Android smartphones of today.
0:59.0	In fact, landline phones, as we know them, are quickly becoming obsolete.
1:04.0	A study from 2018 showed that more than half of US households had no landlines in their homes, and that number keeps growing.
1:12.0	Our mobile phones are so much more than just methods of vocal communication.
1:17.0	They allow us to keep the internet in our pockets, they allow us an endless stream of information and entertainment,
1:23.0	but they're also altering our society and how we interact with the real world.
1:27.0	Our guest today is Dr. Larry Rosen. He's a research scientist and co-author of the Distracted Mind, ancient brains in a high tech world.
1:36.0	He's been studying the psychology of technology since the 1980s, in particular how our smartphones have impacted our lives.
1:43.0	Larry Rosen, welcome to American Innovations.
1:47.0	Thanks very much for having me. Sounds like we're going to have an interesting discussion today.
1:51.0	Well, I got a start, so this is at the end of a couple of episodes about the early days of the telephone and Alexander Graham Bell.
1:59.0	But of course, we are not using a telephone to have this conversation. We're doing this over Zoom.
2:05.0	I'm just curious, do you actually still, someone who's studied the history and the psychology of the phone, do you still have a landline phone?
2:13.0	The only reason we have a landline phone is so we can get our DSL line.
2:17.0	We've unplugged the phone, the message that's on there says don't leave a message and we never check it and haven't for years.
2:24.0	We gave up on them about five or six years ago.
2:27.0	We stumbled across one with our kids that had a rotary dial the other day and just played that fun game of, can you guess how this object was supposed to be used? They were just mystified.
	...

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