Turn off your email; turn off your phone; disconnect from the Internet; figure out a way to set limits so you can concentrate when you need to, and disengage when you need to. Technology is a good servant but a bad master.
My first assignment was 12 weeks in Afghanistan. After that, I covered the Indian election for two months. Then I got a phone call saying, ‘Hey, we want you in Brazil,’ and the same happened for Somalia.
Young adults living with a stutter is hard work. How do they handle job interviews? What do they do when the phone rings? How do they ‘chat someone up’? All these things the average person takes for granted prove to be a stammerer’s biggest challenge.
In moments when I question if I should be having kids, I think of all those phone calls from my sister-in-law, in which, 3,000 miles away, I hear my nephews screaming for her attention. I tell her I have to go because I am packing to leave for Europe, and her tone flatlines: ‘That must be nice.’
It’s getting harder and harder to differentiate between schizophrenics and people talking on a cell phone. It still brings me up short to walk by somebody who appears to be talking to themselves.
Don’t get me wrong: I can and do waste time on the Internet with the best of them, but in some respects, I am an embarrassingly analog guy. I am not on Facebook. I write whole books on yellow legal pads. I do not own a cell phone.
It’s impossible. You try to have any kind of relationship with your family, with a man, or with a friend, and you have to be on the phone and the Internet the entire time.
I don’t leave home without my Skullcandy Crushers. I don’t leave home without my Bible, without my phone, and without my computer.
I’m not a naturally social-media inclined person. I still prefer phone calls to texts/emails. I… hate texts.
I only watch National Geographic Channel, and also I have the app on my phone. I’m into astronomy and love to learn about new facts.
It is painful to watch children trying to show off for parents who are engrossed in their cell phones. Children are nostalgic for the ‘good old days’ when parents used to read to them without the cell phone by their side or watch football games or Disney movies without having the BlackBerry handy.
I think those who invest in mutual funds want someone else to do the thinking for them. But the fact that they can move the money around the family of mutual funds just through a phone call lets them feel that they can play tycoons.
Right after something happens to me, the first thing I’ll do is go write when those feelings are really, really fresh. I’ll hum a tune into my phone sometimes.
My first phone was two tin cans tied together with string, and it worked pretty good.
The cell phone has become the adult’s transitional object, replacing the toddler’s teddy bear for comfort and a sense of belonging.
I don’t text, I don’t have a Blackberry. Literally, I just have a cell phone that I haven’t programmed and the whole Bluetooth. No. I don’t even have an earpiece for my cell phone.
Being a novelist and being a mother have exactly coincided in my life: the call from my agent saying that I had a contract for my first novel – that was on my answering phone message when I got back from the hospital with my first child.
The nearest village was a place called Pauperhaugh which was a village in the sense that it had a phone box and a bridge. By the time I got down south I had decades to catch up on. We only got colour television in 1978.
Red carpets seem so glamorous, but you’re really just standing there sweating and worrying your hair is going to fall. And in the end, people are only going to see one picture of you. You just smile for one second and then you walk over to the side and check your phone. It’s pretty weird.
New York as an industry is the best city for real estate. You’re in a very transparent market. If you need to liquidate, you make three phone calls and you could sell something, even in the worst market. It is also less forgiving; if you make a mistake you can lose money.
What is so seductive about texting, about keeping that phone on, about that little red light on the BlackBerry, is you want to know who wants you.
I use my cell phone as much as I can – I talk to friends all the time. I’m like 2,000 hours a month. It’s crazy.
Although I love working and making movies and that will always be the priority, I really do love continuing my education. It’s great to be active and learning instead of sitting around waiting for a phone call for the next project.
For too long, Americans have been plagued by unwanted and unlawful robocalls. For too long, they’ve found unauthorized charges and changes to their phone service on their bills – practices commonly known as ‘slamming’ and ‘cramming.’ And for too long, some phone calls that are placed to rural residents have been dropped.
That actually is one of my huge challenges right now because I write best at night, no question. I can focus. You know you’re not getting any phone calls, I can shut everything down, and I’m just more creative at night.
Armed with nothing more than a Facebook user’s phone number and home address, anyone with an Internet connection and a few dollars can obtain personal information they should never have access to, including a user’s date of birth, e-mail address, or estimated income.
We are the greatest computers in this world, but now we’ve created the smart phone which is smarter than us now, but we’re still making dumb decisions. We have given our creations more power than we have, and that to me is dumb.
So many actors are lively-minded, creative people who just tread water in this awful way, waiting for the phone to ring and doing their hair for auditions. It feels like a bit of a dreamer’s life – as opposed to a sensible ventriloquist’s life.
One day I got a phone call, and Johnny and Dee Dee asked me if I wanted to join their band. I said, ‘Yeah.’
Not using social media in the workplace, in fact, is starting to make about as much sense as not using the phone or email.
Paris and Nicky Hilton? Those girls will show up to the opening of a phone book. It’s like a big joke.
The reason I don’t carry a mobile phone is I don’t want people to know where I am!
The filmmakers who I’m pining to work for aren’t ringing my phone off the hook.
Suddenly I was the man who got the part that every actor in the English language was trying to get. I was really scared. I had talked the talk, and now I had to walk the walk. For three days, I couldn’t answer the phone.
Having Twitter on your phone is like being with a journalist that hates you 24 hours a day. Anything you say on that can be spun. Truly, that’s what you have to think of it as.
If I’m not clear with the character, I can’t do anything with it. But once I get that character, the possibilities are endless. When you have such a defined character, I feel like I can actually read the phone book and make it funny.
I definitely check my phone for texts a lot – like, ‘Did anyone text me? Is anyone thinking about me? Does anyone love me?’
Basketball is my passion, I love it. But my family and friends mean everything to me. That’s what’s important. I need my phone so I can keep in contact with them at all times.
My cell phone is the number one way for me to communicate with my fans. I love the direct connection I can make via social media whether I am on the road or at home.
It is exhausting knowing that most of the time the phone rings, most of the time there’s an email, most of the time there’s a letter, someone wants something of you.
The truth is I’ve been doing Kickstarter before there was Kickstarter; there was no Internet. Social Media was writing letters, making phone calls, beating the bushes.
Growing up, politics never trickled down to the areas we come from. But people from Obama’s camp, and Obama himself, reached out to me and asked for my help on the campaign. We’ve sat and had dinner, and we’ve spoken on the phone. He’s a very sharp guy. Very charming. Very cool.
The wagering thing for a lawyer is very interesting. Will there be mobile sports wagering? Will there be mobile prop betting? Conceivably, someone sitting in basketball area placing prop bets on a mobile phone while the individual is 10 feet from the court? Some of the possibilities are angst-producing.
But in this case, he had my cell phone and my phone was ringing and I had just come back from Australia on the plane and I thought it was my mum and it was Woody Allen just checking to see if I wanted to be in his movie.
I feel if some kid has sat down and felt I’m important enough to write two pages of words to and take up a lot of his valuable time, then he deserves a few words back, or even a phone call as I have done on a few occasions.
When I go back to family reunions everybody goes, ‘Hey cousin! Hey Auntie!’ And I’m like, ‘Okay I don’t know you, I have no idea who you are.’ I am auntie and cousin for so many and even the ones in prison call me collect. And I’ll be like, ‘Which of my family members are giving you this phone number?’
I don’t get on the phone and prank people and things like that on the phone with people, no.
I don’t know the capabilities of our enemies. But I found it quite easy to circumvent security at certain phone companies throughout the United States. So if an inquisitive kid can do it, why can’t a cyberterrorist do it?
Whether it’s on top of a phone booth or a $200 million soundstage, it’s about stories.
