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| Not true! They're old |
Or shall I bore the pants off thee?
I have a new smartphone. Ah - the banality in those few words.
So let's not be obvious. A new smartphone is like... a visit to the psychiatrist. Amazingly that happened when I was "called up" by the RAF. I only realised it later.
Certain UK organisations exist to kill people, preferably foreigners but who’s counting. The state wanted to know if I could kill well or help others to kill. And which operative medium - the sky, the sea, the ground - suited me best. Psychiatrists are expensive so they substituted multi-choice questionnaires. And these were surprisingly subtle.
The data said I'd best serve the Queen by repairing radio equipment used in planes bombing (ie, killing) those below. I said the data was crazy. But it was right. I did repair some radios.
Smartphones have a more malign purpose. New variants are more complex than their predecessors but, to draw in fools, are said to be simpler. Youth, it seems, loves greater complexity. Old age doesn't. Piteous cries from confused septuagenarians confirm the phone manufacturers are on the ball. Cries that provide, in effect, the right multi-choice answer.
Octogenarians like me are thought to be beyond commercial consideration so I have only myself to blame. Decoding a new smartphone is like coming upon London bombed flat by foreign agencies. Certain areas look recognisable but they’re miles away. My evanescent happiness becomes a protracted whinge. My family develop an expression coeval with having a pet put down.
The phone manufacturers have done society a service. They have analysed me and rated my social utility as zero. It only remains to put me in a care home and bring on The Plague.
"The state wanted to know if I could kill well or help others to kill. And which operative medium - the sky, the sea, the ground - suited me best." Well-honed, RR. Might be a poem seeded in there.
ReplyDeleteI have a Samsung, and for the rest we have purchased fancy iPhones. I refuse to carry mine around. My husband carries his around half the waking day because he is on call or at work. Ditto eldest. The others are well glued to the device.
Even my own mother upbraids me for having my phone messaging so full of messages that she may not leave a message. I say, "good." I don't want any more messages than worm their way through already.
Sigh.
The thing makes a good paperweight. Just take your D3 and don't worry too much about the Plague. (Although worry if you have HBP or diabetes, of course, but there are things we can do about those as well.)
You have retained your Robinsonian sense of humor, and for that I am grateful.
Marly: "Honed": it takes one to know one. My perpetual motto: Revision requires as much time as the original draft. First thoughts tend to be clichés. If not a five-dollar word "upbraids" is at least worth $4.25.
ReplyDeleteThose who have signed on for IPhone contract must - perforce ($4.15) - glue themselves to the evidence of their extravagance.
I hope you can figure out your new Smart Phone, it took me a while but I can do the most basic of functions now,
ReplyDeleteBohemian: It's not just figuring the thing out, it's dominating it. Showing who's boss. I've now dressed it in a bright yellow case decorated with a drawing of a bee. That should show the sucker.
ReplyDeleteI've yet to enter the 21st century. My very basic mobile phone is OFF until I want to use it, which is rarely. Yes, it drives other people mad, but it keeps me sane.
ReplyDeleteGarden: It may yet happen. For more than a decade my philosophy was the same as yours. My old unsmart phone was used primarily when travelling in France, phoning ahead to book Logis. It was never switched on because no one knew my number. Neither did I.
ReplyDeleteBut as the years went by I found myself bedevilled by the need to maintain a hoard of change. My French teacher of twenty years charged a mere £5 and five-pound notes were strangely hard to come by. It seemed unfair of me to require she always had change for a tenner, and she hated being paid in advance as a lump sum
This was before most parking meters were amenable to cards and coins were a necessity. I also had a regular weekly payment of £2.50 (for what I fear I have forgotten). Believe it or not, I was continuously harassed by thoughts of specie.
New meters were installed in Hereford high-rise car park. I read the info closely, noting that the system would be capable of accepting phone payments. I realised this would free me from carrying change and speculated that this was the writing on the wall. I bought the cheapest pay-as-you-go smartphone available (£80, £10 a month). Ironically I have never subsequently paid a parking meter with the phone. I always seem to have change these days. I rarely make or receive calls. But I wouldn't ever want to do without free GPS.