Nah, not me.  While I may not be a church goer I still respect the choice of those who wish to attend.  Thing is, my sister and I were sent to Sunday school as youngsters with nothing much else to do on Sunday mornings, so it didn't really matter so us.  Besides, the lady who ran Sunday School was a kindly old soul who loved kids and who made us feel so welcome and comfortable.

By the time we were teenagers, however, with our friends, things to do and places to go, we were given the option of going or not, meaning our weekends were [within reason] our own.  I spent much of my time at the beach, either fishing or swimming, depending on the weather.... not to mention exploring the caves, the countryside and girls.

Oh, and the church where we went to Sunday School was 950 years old.... making it over a century old today and still standing.  Nope, they don't build stuff like that any more.

I grew up to have a healthy disrespect for Church....simply because it interfered with my weekends.

I guess we all deal with it differently, though.  My father had the attitude that he'd live for ever, and in some ways I'm just like him, in that my own mortality is not something I think about very often.  Sadly, he passed about 20 years ago, though he pretty much fulfilled his dreams.  Mum is 87 years young and still going strong.  She is still quite active and in good health.  She still gets around unaided and is quite spritely for her age.

As for religion, my sister and I went to Sunday School as youngsters, but it wasn't something we continued to do as teenagers.  Thing was, neither of my parents were religious, so they didn't force the issue of us going to church or Sunday School.  In fact, my father always said that religion was for people who were afraid of dying and needed to believe there was something after life here on Earth.  Me, well I'm neither religious or an aetheist.  I sort of believe in a higher power, a creator, if you will, but not sure what or who it is.

Then there's the playing hookey from work.  I rang in sick one day because I wanted to go to the cricket [England vs Australia one dayer] and got caught out when the TV cameras honed in on the section of spectators I happened to be among.  Then there was the other time I rang in and told the boss I wouldn't be in cos my wife was having a baby.  The next day he asked if it was a boy or a girl.....

"Dunno, we gotta wait 9 months now."     

Thing is, I don't like mobile or landline phones at all, but they are necessary for me these days.  After the Nokia Lumia Windows phone became unsupported I pretty much decided to not bother with another cell phone... that is until somebody recommended an Android powered Vivo S1, which I subsequently purchased for emergencies and to keep the line of communication open with friends and family living interstate. 

My wife and I have used cellphones since the Palm Pilot, progressing to various iterations of Samsung Android phones.  We recently cut the cord on our land line.  We had been getting 6 to 10 spam phone calls a day on it, and hardly ever any calls from someone we wanted to talk to.  So now we're on our cells exclusively, and getting only 1 to 2 spam phone calls per day.  I do not like the fact that Google owns Android and probably tracks everything I do, but we do need our phones, especially when traveling.

I use my debit card like a credit card. Don't have to use the pin. Never had a problem.

I think WiFi is fantastic. I've never had any sort of problem with it. The Router/Modem is password protected. I also use a VPN sometimes. Never had a problem.

I know people that put tape over the camera on their laptops. I would never do that.

I'll leave the philosophy lessons and social discourse to you guys. Sometimes over thinking something is almost as bad as not thinking.

I use technology to do things. It actually makes my life easier. I'm not obsessed with it. It's just another tool.

Years ago people were in awe of the radio, automobiles, electric light and TV. They all became part of our lives and now we don't even think about them. We just use them. They're just things. If they weren't there anymore people would learn to adapt.

I've gone back and forth on the moble-phone idea myself, as I've also seen how they (and beepers/pagers before them) became tools to tether individuals to obligations (they do not want to have), rather than tools of convenience or liberation they are originally presumed to be when their uptake by society is on that exponential curve upwards.  Already I see inklings of the protected and privileged classes (people with enough education/prestige/wealth to be able to say "no") stepping away from phones/tablets/etc because of the broad recognition of the trade-offs inherent in their dependence upon these devices (and potential harms of this dependence).  Thus, while a mobile phone was a status symbol 15 years ago, the ability to ignore calls and turn off the phone is quickly becoming a status symbol over the next 15 years. 

If you're interested, there is a lot of academic literature on choice, self-binding, second order preferences, etc with respect to individuals and how they choose to give-up or limit things that they like, but are potentially harmful in excess.  I would place mobile phones into this continuum myself, personally.  My phone doesn't ring if anyone I don't know calls, I get no beeps, boops, or other alerts at all.  I do not use it for personal email, I keep virtually every convenient service on it turned off, have viciously eschewed any apps or games that are not strictly necessary (for security, being the main reason, but I find the idea that any app adds much utility fairly dubious) and generally keep it tweaked for minimal addictiveness...  One thing that I will say though, is that phones are INCREDIBLY useful while traveling, although the joy of getting lost is an experience quickly on its way to extinction in the present day...

If I may.  What I feel like you're attempting to put into words, but are falling short on the specific language and terminology to succinctly do so is that there is no innate quality of technology that makes life /better/.  This is an idea that's been seeing a lot of resurgence as each subsequent generation that's followed your Boomer footsteps has found itself to be increasingly impoverished (Gen-X, the Millenials, then Gen-Z or the Homelanders (the name is still being debated, I think it should be "Generation-F" myself)).  What these generations have been increasingly questioning is the "Myth of Progress" and are increasingly coming to the conclusion that the "Progress" and the ideas of Techno-utopianism are actually just religions.  Religions both of belief ("all new technology is better than what it replaced"), as well as of practice (consumerism).  And like many Religions, many of these precepts have been hijacked by powerful interests, despite being of a questionable infallibility to begin with.  The precepts that made this belief system "work" were largely predicated upon resource abundance - which is now transitioning to resource scarcity; if not on absolute terms, certainly on a per-capita basis..

This post wasn't meant to be about religion, but rather, that this idea is so pervasive and so entrenched that the only appropriate terminology with which to describe it is that of something equally pervasive and entrenched in human history, which are religions. 

You might quite like, and find a lot of resonance in the writings of John Michael Greer - he also has a ton of book interviews on  Youtube.  For example: here is a post he wrote about razor blades and how no one can get a decent shave anymore (just like your observation that mobile phones are so convenient that you can't even hear the guy on the other end of the call anymore) https://archdruidmirror.blogspot.com/2017/06/what-progress-means.html

You might quite like a lot of his posts on this archived blog on industrial civilization. 

That's probably about enough nonsense from my end, but I just wanted to wave and say that I like your thread..

-tid242

edit: I might add.  You might really like Oswald Spengler's "Technics and Man" (recently reprinted, finally), and if you like it you could even dive into his Opus: "Decline of the West" - now that you're retired you would have time for it.  It sounds like it would resonate with the zeitgeist you're channeling 

Almost everyone I know is addicted to their cell.

That's how I feel and I'm stickin to it.  

First Motorola flip phone i saw in use was a cafe owner but he was a druggie ...cos one of those was about 7k aud ....

As far as the cell phone goes you've a right to feel any way you want. You sound like an old man when you talk about "cell phones". Most people refer to them as smart phones. In any event it seems to me that you've never used a contemporary smart phone. They are great. I rarely get phone calls. I use my phone for so much more. There's quite a lot of useful things packed into phones now a days. They really are hand held computers in a lot of ways. You should check it out then you could have a educated opinion and not one based on something you saw 40 years ago.

One other thing. I've worked in offices where people would talk on land line phones and were loud. Those people were usually loud people even when they weren't on the phone. Being loud is being loud. That's how some people talk whether they are on a phone or not.

As well it should be.

And when that happens your post will be relocated appropriately.

Hi, BTW .... can't believe it's been 7 years either....if I had to bet I'd say 2 or 3...