Tanya is really busy in my life. She:
- Wakes me up in the morning with a gentle piece of music. Not like that witch of a Blackberry Torch that screamed at me to get my lazy ass up with a shrill demonic shriek….
- carries all my friends’ details around in her head, and she can store thousands of them… I can only remember my wife’s cellphone number from my human memory… some really bad sectors there, and no defrag available yet…
- carries the master copy of my Calendar. This is also why she is a woman- she orders me around the whole day…
- when I do go out to get some exercise, she carefully monitors my progress and tell my friends on Facebook how lazy I have become again. (Endowment Sports Tracker app).
- She plays my favourite music to keep me calm, or to pick me up…
- She takes photos that are really beautiful, I am not always able to carry a larger digital camera with me, and she is there to preserve the memory instantly…
- I can read my favorite blogs wherever I go, I don’t have to go look for an Internet café to read something on the net, or to get my emails…
- With email, phone, SMS (text), skype, whatsapp- I have all the communication tools available to communicate with anyone, anywhere…
- Late at night, I lay in bed, say goodnight to the Universe via Google Skymap, and look a last time at that last comment you left on this blog.
- Then I read my Bible verse on You Version App, and pray for Life, the Universe and Everything… may the answer be more than 42.. (And no, I don’t like prayers on facebook…)
Yes, Tanya is a blessing in my life… BUT.
- It really hurts when you loose a smartphone. It feels like death in the family… Like when that Blackberry Torch was stolen in March… Suddenly all unsaved data is gone… all the photos that I did not back up yet…
- It takes over your life- I am now available 24 hrs per day, and even reachable when riding my bicycle 30 km out of town.
- When I am down, I still get all the sad stories on facebook immediately, and the black hole deepens…
- The Blackberry Torch drove me to the edge of insanity with all the software issues, and the 13 times it rebooted daily…
- And my biggest gripe- with all the communication ability that a smartphone provides, I found that interpersonal communication has become much shallower… people don’t talk anymore… they do not look in each other’s eyes. They do not share a bottle of red wine next to a fireplace, they just text in 160 characters, or Tweet in 140…
Communication between 2 persons is 7 % words, and the rest is facial expression, and body language. A smart phone misses 93 % of communication, and this just does not speak like a tear or a sigh…
So- a smartphone is also a Curse…
My conclusion, dear fellows of the Royal Society of Science and Nonsense therefore is: A smartphone is like fire- if you use it well, it is a wonderful tool. If you misuse it, it will burn you…
