I hate my stupid phone. I hate how it loses charge for no reason. I hate how the bluetooth connection sometimes decides to ignore my car, as though the car said something rude and it wants to teach it a lesson. I hate how easily confused the GPS is, since it is slow to update and frequently just puts me in Saskatoon. Most of all, I hate that I am actually complaining about all those things.
I have deliberately stayed behind the curve on phone technology, being a reluctant adopter to pretty much every new advance. Only this, the most recent phone I've owned, has even had the most basic smart phone technology installed, although most of that does not actually work most of the time anyway. I only bought this one because my old, not very smart phone decided to die spectacularly while I was sending a text to my sister. I have taken steps to consciously avoid the latest and greatest in phone technology.
Why have I done this? Well, I am kind of afraid of it, to be honest. I'm not literally afraid of the phone, that would be absurd, but I'm afraid of relying on it. The rather roundabout way I have managed this is to ensure I do not actually own a phone I can rely on to do more than the simplest tasks. I can contact people with the phone, they can contact me, but otherwise it is not an object I can really use to do everything. The operating system does not support a wide spectrum of applications, it cannot actually do too much at all really, so if I leave it at home, at work or at the bottom of the sea, I'm never lost without it. There are many people for whom a phone has become an essential lifeline, and the idea of that is somewhat scary to me, the idea that I can't live without technology.
This aggressive and bone-headed streak of luddism is no longer compatible with the world we live in. Phones have become ubiquitous, and because of that many places are making them integral to services and new technology. The logic is that as the more complex devices become more ubiquitous, it makes sense to just embrace the technology everyone already owns. The phone is not quite required for simply living, but it is creeping towards that point, whether I want to embrace it or not.
I think I've tried to avoid it just because I know how much time I spend tethered to a screen, and would like to pretend that there is one part of my life which is not heavily reliant on some kind of technology. I know this is pretty much just a lie, I rely heavily on text to keep in touch with people. I would like to pretend I am not lost without it, but in an unfamiliar part of the city I was lost with it, given that the GPS does not work properly, and as much as I want to believe I am a brilliant navigator I can still miss a street or get on the wrong crescent. As much as I would like to claim I want to keep the phone from invading my life, I look at things phones can do now, and the way the technology is being integrated, and realize that I'm just clinging to a world that no longer exists.
I do not think I'll embrace it whole hog, of course, mostly because data plans are expensive and I am cheap, but it's about time to admit that the world has moved on, phones are a big part of it now, and trying to ignore that fact is little more than a fool's errand. I guess it's time to go shopping.
