I think I’ve talked before about one reason I want to avoid getting a smartphone (see also: Premee isn’t watching for open manholes at the best of times), but here’s another: eggs.
Feeling like I was putting all my gadgetry eggs into one basket freaks me out. Even just thinking about it freaks me out.
To do the things an iPhone does, I need to carry around all of the following:
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1. Games – a game emulator
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2. Video – game emulator
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3. Music – mp3 player (RCA Lyra, purchased in 2005)
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4. Camera – Panasonic Lumix
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5. Scheduler – a paper planner (ordered from Letts of London every July)
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6. Notebook – back of planner, and a pen
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7. Phone – actual cell phone
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8. Internet – not applicable
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9. Books – an actual paperback, generally, or a couple of dozen stored on the emulator
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10. Maps – an actual map
And I’m probably missing things off the list, because without owning one I don’t know what else the God Machine actually does.
But will you just look at that list?
It becomes painfully evident that I could lose the bag full of stuff and just carry an iPhone, does it not? (If it makes any difference, 99% of the time, my purse contains only the planner, the phone, and the book.)
Yet I continue to reject the idea of giving up a million separate gadgets, kind of along the lines of, “Well, losing my phone is OK, I’ve only lost my phone; losing my Lyra is OK, I’ve only lost my Lyra.” Etcetera. I split up my army so that the loss of one division doesn’t end the war.
I’m afraid, though, that on my recent trip back east I did come across as a bit of a Luddite. For instance, being lost in 2010 is a very archaic thing to do – practically unheard-of, really, in most of North America. How can you get lost when you can use GPS and Google Maps on your phone? And restaurants too, I think I was the only tourist in Montreal eyeballing the posted menus or using a guidebook. Everyone else was looking up reviews on their phones. Did they get better meals than me? Just check their Twitter feed! I checked into my flight at the airport, not sitting on a bench waiting for my lapdance to start. When I was bored, I walked around and looked at things. When a minor pop-culture dispute came up, I watched as it was resolved in eight seconds flat using someone’s iPhone and the relevant IMDB entry. I felt like a Hutterite who’d taken a wrong turn in his buggy and ended up in a Futurama episode.
Now I say again: are we, as a generation, missing out on things with our faces buried in those little screens? Is it no longer fun to get lost in a new city? Does photograph quality no longer matter except to obssessive amateurs? Isn’t it more entertaining to argue for twenty minutes about who played the original third roommate on Three’s Company, segueing from topic to topic till someone brings up the name of the dog on Fraggle Rock and you know you’ve all gone temporarily mad? Isn’t it more relaxing to be a blissful, anonymous mote in a crowd, instead of simultaneously attempting to broadcast one’s location on Foursquare, activities on Twitter, reviews on Yelp, photos on Flickr, and thoughts on Facebook, as well as keeping up with everyone else who’s trying to do the same thing? Does the battery indicator on a smartphone really indicate the maximum length of time in which we can exist in the modern world?
Or am I just a fuddy-duddy?
Getting lost: this is only fun when willful, and you can close the map app just as you can close the map.
Photography: Smart phones are getting better at photos – the best camera is the one you have now, and most people like to remove items from their purses. Prosumers are increasingly served by DSLRs that are dropping in price.
Arguments about facts: I always found it frustrating to have to argue with people about things that I was certain about.
Broadcasting the fleeting: I agree with you here.
That said, I still don’t own a smartphone.
Personally I think we have become too technology dependant. It is one thing to have the technology replace something you would be doing anyway – using an electronic map instead of a paper one for example. But you know it has gone too far when you are at a museum or out for dinner with friends and more interested in the latest twitters than your present company you are no longer living in the moment but in the moment of someone else’s life and texting at a wedding, while sitting at the head table is just wrong … so, so wrong. Ok, end rampage.
“Arguments about facts: I always found it frustrating to have to argue with people about things that I was certain about.”
Ah, there’s the difference – I process arguments like that as entertainment, not frustration. I find the pointlessness of it amusing and a good way to bond with people as the conversation jumps around.
Also, I like the word ‘prosumer.’ I am not one, but I like it.
“you are no longer living in the moment but in the moment of someone else’s life”
YES YES YES, perfectly-put. Exactly what I was trying to say. The constant broadcast makes it impossible as well as undesirable to live in the here-and-now. I enjoyed your rampage.
It’s not about the phone – it’s about the cloud.
I wish I didn’t have an iPhone, I would prefer an Android device. But either way, the new phone is connected to my calendars that I use all the time – my google calendar, my yahoo calendar, even my work calendar. My contacts are the same way. Any photos I take with my phone are uploaded to my Flickr account and shared via Twitter to my Facebook page. My RSS feed reader is synchronised across my internet, including on the phone.
“you are no longer living in the moment but in the moment of someone else’s life” – I agree with this but I also feel it’s the same of texting as it is of taking a photo of a situation – you are removing yourself from the event as a participant in order to be come an observer. If I tweet about an event, it’s often to bear witness to it rather than to say “LOL DOUBLE RAINBOW” to someone not involved in what I’m doing.