My beloved Blackberry of three years is slowly dying. At first the signs of its demise were subtle, a loose key here, a crackly speaker there. And then last month messages and emails started to randomly disappear, the trackball stopped working, and the return key popped out completely. Sure I’ve owned a couple cellphones before, but never a smart phone. And by smart I mean brilliant; and by phone, I mean friend. Waiting for late friends to show up at the bar and/or club used to be an interminable experience. Now they’re an opportunity to catch up with today’s news. Just last weekI waited a good 35 minutes for a friend to meet me at a restaurant. I barely noticed; by then I’d read all about North Korea in the New York Times, the UN Food Program from Slate, and updated my Facebook status to call my friend who was running late a jerk. People’s tardiness provided a means for me to become well informed!
Cellphones are no longer just phones; heck, they’re not even just computers - they’re nothing less than our gateway to the world. Most of my communication with friends is now done via text message, most of my news and information is learned after a Google search done on my smartphone, and most of my social calendar is organized through social networking like the mobile Facebook app. . Speaking of which, when you consider the relatively recent phenomenon of phone ‘aps’, there isn’t a single second of your life that can’t be managed one way or another via your smart phone. Take my friend ‘Graham’ for example; he downloaded an app onto his iPHONE which detects when you roll over in bed, and thus measures your sleeping patterns, waking you up when you’re at your shallowest part of the sleep cycle ensuring the best sleep possible. His job during the day requires him to follow breaking tech news, which he can do through various other news aps, which categorize everything he needs to know exactly in the manner he needs to get it. His diet is managed by another app, which measures his caloric intake and ensures he’s getting all of his essential vitamins and minerals, and when he’s not working it plays music and videos for him that it knows he likes. Throw in the fact that he spends at least twenty minutes a night reading news on his iPhone before going to bed; he probably spends more time in his phone’s rosy glow than that of his wife.
The level of comfort people now feel towards their phone became abundantly clear to me after buying my aging Blackberry’s replacement off craigslist last week. The lesbian couple I met in a café to sell me their phone had failed to wipe out the phone’s memory, and left an intimate video of themselves from a few months previous. (Sure the visuals were dark, but the sound let left little enough to the imagination that I know have myself a delightful new ring-tone.) And this couple were my age..! Able to remember an age where cellphones came with large black antennas and encased in fifteen pounds of white kitchen appliance plastic. It’s no wonder that this generation of kids who have grown up with cellphones feel so comfortable disrobing in front of them (a la sexting).
Is there a downside to all this constant connectivity? I suppose so. Last year while travelling across some isolated parts of rural Asia I went days without cellphone service. (Personal cell phone service... the locals working the rice paddies still had plenty of time to text). There was something liberating about being unplugged for a while; when I got back to the city a few days later and checked my Facebook and email accounts expecting a flood of waiting correspondence, only to find that the world has gone on without me, fairly indifferent. In a world where you’re wired non-stop to everyone else, some anonymity was nice.
And yet, those few weeks where I had a barely functioning Blackberry were some of the hardest I’ve had to go through in a while; for the first time in a long time I had to deal with, well, boredom. And as interesting as I am, I for one don’t want to be left with nothing but my thoughts.
Comments
Rui Couto
This explains you not answering about Scott Pilgrim. What did you get as a replacement?
thanx to the wonder of my ignorance re: CDMA technology, the Telus Blacberry Curve 8530 I bought didn't work, so I had to resell it. I'm still using the barely functional BB 8800 World Edition that is on its dying legs.
Because I'm on Bell, the only unlocked BBs I can buy are the 9700 Bold, and the upcoming, way-too-expensive- Torch, so I gotta drop at least 350-800 bucks... which is more than I can afford.
Posted Aug. 17, 2010 9:29:28 am
John
I have the 9700 bold and I think I'm under utilizing it. I'm not even sure if I know how to appreciate it. Everytime it buzzes, i feel like I've been hit by a body shot, "man, what does that client want now???"
anyway....
Posted Aug. 18, 2010 2:01:47 am
Rui Couto
I hear ya...I cringe every time my office phone rings
This explains you not answering about Scott Pilgrim. What did you get as a replacement?