How not to be a slave to your smartphone
Pavlov was a scientist who conditioned a dog. Whenever he rang a bell, the dog expected food and its mouth started to water. The smartphone conditions human behavior in almost exactly the same way. Through our smartphones, we humans have become like Pavlov's dog. But it doesn't have to be that way. When we get a text, the sender knows we've received it. We feel some stress about that. We should be asking, "Am I the dog, or am I the master?" If you no longer trust yourself, who is left to trust? We also get lots of spam calls, usually at just the wrong time. So recently I experimented with some of these phone apps that claim to block spam and unwanted calls. I tried a few and finally settled on an app called "TrueCaller", but there are a number of other good ones. My criteria were simple: 1. If it's from somebody I have in my Contacts, let it go through, and show me a popup on my home screen that identifies the caller. 2, If it's