I just finished reading Adam Holz’s “Why I’m Not Getting an iPhone” story. Pretty interesting stuff.
He says that, for him at least, having access to the whole World Wide Web via smartphone would be a bad, bad thing. The more time he spends online, the less time he has to spend with his friends and family, and frankly, he’s got enough distractions in his life. He went so far as to call the push-pull between his real-life relationships with his hypothetical cell phone a “diabolical trade-off”:
I'm cultivating relationships with objects onscreen while treating my real relationships as objects. That is, as things—not as cherished individual souls. And if you think labeling such behavior as diabolical seems like overkill, I'll argue with you here. The Greek root of the word, diabolos, from which we get our devil, in its most literal sense means to divide, split into two, or cast through something. And that's what often and easily happens when I'm immersed in digital data—I'm split and cut off from what's going on around me. I'm being diabolical.
Like I said, interesting.
Ironically, right before Adam started banging out his story about why he wasn’t getting a smartphone, I went out and bought one.
I bought it for two pretty terrible reasons: One, they were cool, and two, everyone was doing it. Never mind that the phone I had my eye on—a nice little Android number—was expensive. Never mind that, to make it worth my while, I’d need to buy a nice little monthly data package, too. But lots of my friends had already made the switch and, well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. “It has GPS!” I told my wife. “I can check e-mail! I can use it as a level! And you can’t forget … Angry Birds!”
But I knew, even as I was plopping down the money, it might be money ill spent. My concern wasn’t Adam’s. I wasn’t worried that I would use the thing too much, but that I’d use it too little.
And, about a month into my smartphone ownership, I think my fears have been justified.
I know my phone has more computing power than NASA had when it sent Apollo 11 to the moon. I know there are 60 quintillion apps I could download, from hiking maps to stenography tools to an app that might cook me dinner. I use this phone much like I did my previous one: To text frequently, to talk occasionally and to recharge constantly.
I’ve downloaded a few apps (including the way nifty cool Plugged In app! Get yours today!), but I just don’t remember to use them much. I’ve tried to commit to putting down all my appointments into my phone’s built-in planner, but I’ve yet to do it.
I’m beginning to suspect that I’m not smart enough to own a smart phone.
I’m an analog dude living in a digital world. And while I hope to utilize a bit more of my phone than I’m doing now, I don’t think it’ll ever fuse to my hand, as such phones have done with others. And maybe I’m not alone.
This week, our Plugged In poll asks our readers how they use their cell phones. So far (after about 1,000 votes), 12% had registered that they didn’t use them at all. This is actually up from a similar poll we conducted two years ago, where 10% of our readers were phoneless.
Now, these polls are far from scientific. But still, it’s interesting to think about: Are some folks unplugging from their phones?
It seems wildly improbable, from everything we see and read, but I can understand the temptation, too. There are days when I’d like to chuck my nifty new phone and run off into the forest. Only problem is, my phone’s probably smart enough to follow me.
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