I never thought in a million years I’d be writing the following words – but I love my new smart phone. (I may have put it as a Facebook status, oh 97 times, however.) It’s not the iPhone or of the Android persuasion, nor is it of the Blackberry ilk. It’s different than the others. It’s the present-day, smart phone underdog, the Windows 7.5 Mango phone and I love it!
Okay, love is a strong word – in all fairness – but this invention is truly mind-numbing compared to what technology offered by way of phones in 1998 when I purchased my first two-year package. But I suppose I loved that clunky old Nokia I had back then, too.
There was something extremely satisfying about wirelessly making a remote telephone call outside the 30 or 60 foot radius of a telephone base station - sitting on a telephone stand in the front hallway – in the comfort of my apartment – something even more satisfying about sending email and web browsing now, today, 14 years later on a state-of-the-art handy dandy smart phone miles and miles away from home.
Mobile phone technology is incredible nowadays; even cooler than the big, clunky platform shoe, brick, bag phones of the 1980s and 1990s. Nowadays, when holding a smart phone in your hand you are holding more technology than the first laptops had bundled in them and that’s saying a lot (because, there was more technology inside the first IBM laptop than all the technology it took to complete the first moon landing from start to finish, according to Mike DiMichelle of http://www.savemybutt.com)!
In a mere forty-three years, we now hold in our hands more technology than it took to land a man on the freaking moon! Doesn’t that blow your mind? I’m in awe of it all and yet, who is the first person to shake his phone around when it doesn’t connect immediately? I am! As comedian Louis CK said, “Give it a second, it’s going to space! Can you give it a second, it’s going to space!”
That’s precisely how spoiled I’ve become and we all have become since these technological marvels have taken us by the short hairs and not let go. (iPhone premiered originally on my birthday, July 11th, 2007). It leaves me breathless most days just thinking about it. Youngsters under thirty, need it, rely upon it, can’t live without it and find it all very passe, very matter-of-fact. It is and pretty much always has been a part of their lives.
The fact that I hold a miniature computer in my hands every time I hold my smart phone completely blows me away! I can talk to the thing (Bing Voice) and have it find for me people, places and things. I can take a picture of something (Bing, again) and have it find the thing for me, tell me about it and give me the option to buy it right then and there – on the phone via various ‘apps’. It tells me weather, sports scores, traffic, news; anything I want whenever I want. It’s interactive television on crack, I tell you, right in the very palm of your hand!!!
All wide-eyed, Pollyanna wonderment aside, however, I do love this thing and have found since I bought it in late July / early August of last year – that I, now, having had it for 6 months or so, can’t live without the blasted thing. How bad does that sound? Because surely there are people my age and older simply happy to have the ease and convenience of making a mobile telephone call and nothing else – no other bells or whistles on their phones – they’re completely good with that. I, on the other hand need more, want more, require more and I’m not sure why. Maybe I am spoiled now that I have one. Whether that makes me a geek or not – I don’t know. But what it definitely makes me is happy. Happy to be in the know, about as up to date as I can be technology-wise and not left completely in the dust of yesteryear’s technology. It’s keeping me, at 49 years old, young! And that, if nothing else, is a really great feeling. It’s not the ‘end all’ and ‘be all’ to life. But for right now, I’ll take it.
MJC
Wed. 01/04/12
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Random Thoughts for the New Year in No Particular Order
It would have been nice to have a clear shot of the meteor showers somehow, somewhere in the 3am to 5am sky.
Were the Mayans right? Is 2012 going to be the end of the world?
Sixty degree temperatures in Miami is not the same as sixty degree temperatures in Chicago.
Has the Huffington Post taken over the world or what?
I am not sure anymore is there is such a thing as a good or even a great buffet.
Paul Simon was right 25 years ago when he sang: this is the age of miracle and wonder.
And he was right last year, again, when he sang: so beautiful, so what!
The chefs on the Food Network show, Chopped, are never given baked beans, bacon and onions as their ingredients. If they did, I’d kick their proverbial keysters!
Although they have been around for years, I still cannot get used to the knitted winter caps with the ear flaps and chin ties because they make grown people look like little babies.
You may lack a lot of things in your refrigerator and pantry but if you can say you have peanut butter, jelly and a loaf of white bread, then things are, overall, pretty darned good!
The holidays may come and go but ignorance lasts the whole year through.
Tallywacker is a funny word.
When driving south and east back into Chicago after work ends – the last few mornings – between eight and nine a.m. the sun sits about three quarters of the way risen in the upper right-hand sky of my windshield. I love the sun on my face but it is making it nearly impossible to drive.
Finally, I hope 2012 is a great year for me and for everybody!
Happy New Year, everyone!
MJC
This is your 881st post.
