Jackie Wells-Fauth
Now, anyone who knows me, knows I am no friend to the telephone. I actually spent a year in therapy and most of it involved my difficulties with the phone. So when I pick on the use of the phone, you must consider my natural prejudices to the darn thing, but seriously, am I the only one who thinks the phone is taking over our lives? Forget other artificial intelligence, just look at that thing that seems to be attached to everyone’s hand today!
I liked the phones of yesteryear. They hung on the wall; you couldn’t take them any further than the cord would stretch and the only thing they did was make it possible for you to communicate with the outside world—one person at a time. They knew their place and it was comfortable. You couldn’t put them in your pockets or get a weather report on them or discover how far you walked that day. I was very satisfied with this.
Today, the telephone has shrunk in size, but grown gargantuan in use. If I have this right, the phones in our shirt pockets have the ability to: provide internet access, make videos, take all types of pictures, give a weather report, comment on our fitness activities, open the garage doors and turn on and off the lights, babysit and entertain the children, report on who is at the front door, monitor our health, serve as our secretary by reminding us of our schedule and oh, yes, serve as an actual TELEPHONE! And I know, since I am a non-technological marvel, that for many people, I have not even scratched the surface.
And why do I object to all of these many talents of today’s “mobile device”? Well, for one thing, I can’t begin to use all of the dizzying “apps” that are available: I once had a medical office worker complain that she tried to leave a voice message for me, but my voice messages were full. I didn’t even know I HAD voice messages on my phone, let alone have any clue how to access them!
Beyond that, I find that as a reasonable, non-threatening-appearing human being with some entertainment value, I cannot socially compete with the phone. I find myself trying to make conversation with the people near me, only to look around and discover everyone is on their phone. No doubt conversing through text about what a bore I am, talking about the latest funny joke I heard on the television—yes, television; that was the entertainment addiction before the smart phone.
It is impossible to have a conversation that doesn’t get interrupted by at least a half dozen “fact-checks”: “I’m pretty sure that flood happened in 1973, but that really isn’t the point of my story”. Before I can get all of that out of my mouth, three people have checked it out and the flood was actually in 1975—and everyone, including me, has completely lost interest in the point of my story by then! Conversation has been reduced to snippets shared from the internet on our phones and a good weather forecast can be brought up minute by minute, while simultaneously tracking where we are every minute of the day.
Unfortunately, the non-amusing part of these devices is the fact that they are causing accidents on the road and interruption of bodily functions—such as sleeping. Beyond that, we face the ever present danger of someone hacking the phone, losing the phone or having the phone destroyed—like when someone’s trying to get your attention and the only way they can find to do that is to snatch the phone, throw it onto the driveway and back the car over it repeatedly. This can produce a great deal of satisfaction—or so I am told.
Now, I know that the modern telephone is a technological wonder—personally, I wonder how to use the darn thing—but as a human being who was born when computers were still so big they filled entire rooms, I have trouble adjusting to the world being contained in the palm of my hand and people giving me that sad, superior little smile when they look at my set of encyclopedias and pronounce them “quaint.” So, since all of us go our own way, I will continue to fact check with my World Book Encyclopedias and attempt to hack into my own phone. Anybody out there know how to check Voice-Mail?
dropsinthewell 