What are your opinions on smart watches? Do we really need them? Another question that I have is that I am seeing more and more people everyday with smart phones, but nothing really "smart" is happening with these devices. I believe that there more of a distraction then an actual benefit. Especially when it comes to students in USA and some other countries. I don't mean that they distract everyone in the world but when you take a look in a typical USA classroom (HS or College) I am seeing lower critical thinking, reading skills, math skills, etc. I am asking this question because recently had to start in a community college due to crazy tuition cost for a 4 year university and had to take this student success class to transfer and we had to take this survey on how we spent our time and my class of 28 students average 4.5 hours a day on smart phones and only 1.5 hours of studying/homework. I am not saying I am a genius but I at least try my hardest when it comes to school because I truly want to become an mechanical engineer, but I am noticing a epidemic of lazy and ignorant people. Do you think USA has a education crisis on its hands?
I've wondered what it would be like to go back 50 or 60 years, tell someone you have a device in your pocket with which you can access the sum total of human knowledge. You use it to look at funny cat pics. (entirely possible this is a stolen quote)
Smart phones have just made it easier to do what a lot of people would do any way, procrastinate. Only difference now is that same procrastination is a lot more fun/engaging, you get to look at funny cat pics, gossip on friendface, crush candy and all manner of exciting things. Worse still the popularity of these devices is almost a discrete wink and nod at societies acceptance of it all.
Then there's the other side of the argument, smart phones can be used for good! They let people have information at their fingertips which can only help education, right? Well yeah I guess, but at the same time having such easy access to information means people don't need to learn. Anything you want to know can be looked up, so instead of training people with the skills to educate themselves and grow their own knowledge, we're training them to use google, which is fine until you run into a situation that requires a little out of the box thinking.
At the end of the day I think it's going to come down to the attitude of the people using them. If they're like you, are driven and want to get somewhere in life they'll make it despite distractions like smart phones, even using them along the way to assist in their goals. If they aren't, they won't, and in 10yrs time we'll have a Dr Phil/Oprah show dedicated to how smartphones have ruined a generation.
/rant.
On smart watches.. Not sure on those yet. I've got an Omate smartwatch coming from kickstarter (some time this decade I hope) which I bought thinking, I have no idea what I'm going to do with it, but it seems cool and I don't want to be kicking myself later for not getting one... Think I'll save my verdict for after it comes.