Don’t hate us because we’re technological
Published June 10, 2009 | 
But I was lonely, I was lost,
Without my little black box.
I pick up the phone and go, Execute.
“Hello, I know that you’ve been feeling tired.
I bring you love and deeper understanding.”
– kate bush
So there we were flying down this amazingly thin road in an amazingly large RV where passing cars practically kissed our wing mirrors as they went by. Freya Hoffmeister was driving. She reached down into the console tray beside her and lifted a small black cell phone in one hand and flipped it open. She was immediately immersed in the tiny screen; Responding to emails verbally into the air and typing away on the slide-out keyboard, all the while navigating the curves and traffic of this tiny, winding, British roadway. I thought, “Now that’s the kind of phone I want”! I also thought, “We’re all going to die!!!”
Of course the sad Shakespearean tragedy was that back home when it came time to buy a new cellphone, we only had limited options in our area. None of them offered that fancy anatomically correct keyboard. My only real requirements at the time were that I needed to get online and check email. (I never actually talk on my cellphone!) In the end I settled with a way too expensive Blackberry that I never really liked and honestly rarely used. My Blackberry was like an old tin of caviar on an empty store shelf during the apocalypse; It was disgusting & expensive, but the only meal in town.
Well it’s 2 years later and time for me to find a new phone. Time to break the chains of Blackberry oppression!!! Well, things have changed and there are a lot more options. I’m still pretty limited by companies that have decent coverage where I live. You wouldn’t think it, but our bonsai mountains do make a difference.
After spending some time researching a replacement for my disappointing Blackberry, I decided to get the HTC Touch Pro. (Oh, and before you say it, we don’t have Iphone coverage in our area.) Finally I get that slide out keyboard that I had looked upon with some envy a few years back.!! As I suspected the keyboard makes blogging, messaging, email and such practical for my computer trained hands. With the Blackberry I would just pound away at it like a frustrated chimp with a lock box. I knew the reward was in there if I could only figure out how to work the damn thing!
In the end, I’m a simple minded person and am not in need of the 1001 features of this phone or any other. I just went for the animalistic, tactile feedback of keyboard and touch screen. All the fancy calendars, games, alarms, sounds and options with options will no doubt go by totally wasted on me. Funny thing too. You see, that new (to us) Jeep we just purchased is also full of all sorts of technological wizardry we really don’t need. It’s stuffed with computer driven mayhem we would never have requested or could have afforded if not for the fact of the high miles. But here’s where things get really spooky… The phone, and the Jeep are Blue tooth. They can talk to each other!!
My car and my cell phone can ponder the universe together. They can muse over why I don’t sit for hours on end swimming through manuals to program them to do things I can very well do myself. They can look out for me and protect me from myself and others. They can tell me when it’s time to take another pill! They can worry that I don’t take them seriously. They can lament and they can conspire! I fear one my car and my phone will sit together and write me an email. They will tell me to give in to the joys of electronics. They will tell me to set alarms and program GPS points of interest. They’ll encourage me to select calming life-like birdsong rings, and to check my comforting graphical, digital tire pressure gauge each day. They’ll tempt me by turning on the heated seats while I sit behind the steering wheel and browse Youtube. They’ll turn on their proximity sensors and warn me if I’m about to die. They’ll remind me that they care.
At the bottom of this email from my car and my cell phone will be 3 perfect “X”s in a crisp clean font and below it will be a post script that will read, “Don’t hate us because we’re technological.”
For you techie’s here’s the HTC Touch Pro Specs…
• Size: 4.17 (L) x 2.05(W) x 0.70 (D)
• Weight: 5.3 ounces
• Connectivity: CDMA 2000 1X/EVDO Rev.A/1xRTT and IS-95A/B voice or data. Dual band (800 and 1900 MHz)
• Operating system: Windows Mobile® 6.1 Professional
• Display: 2.8-inch VGA touch screen
• Camera: 3.2MP, with autofocus, flash and video calling
• Internal memory: 512 MB flash, 288 MB RAM
• Expansion slot: microSD memory card (SD 2.0 compatible); supports up to 16 GB
• Keyboard: Slide-out five-row QWERTY keyboard
• Bluetooth: v2.0 with A2DP support (Stereo Bluetooth)
• Wireless: Wi-Fi 802.11b/g
• GPS: GPS/AGPS
• Interface: HTC ExtUSB (mini-USB and audio jack in one; USB 2.0 High-Speed)
• Battery: 1340 mAh
• Talk time: 250 minutes
• Chipset: Qualcomm MSM 7201A 528MHz
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One Response to Don’t hate us because we’re technological
Such a modern conundrum, the luddite web-designer… I can relate.
Your phone sounds way too complicated. Asimov said something to the effect that technology is only useful when it is invisible. Perhaps you are better off not reading the manual, and ignoring most of its “usefulness”.