Techno-Twittery

My mobile telephonic device, she is busted. This makes me sad.

This little fella says it better than I ever could…
Image: publicdomainpictures.net

It couldn’t have happened at a worse time, either. I was just stepping onto the train that would carry me on the first leg of my journey home (well, to my parents’ home, really) for the weekend when I discovered that my phone had decided enough was enough. It was a strange moment for me. I haven’t been mobile-phoneless for about fifteen years – which is scary, when you think about it – and, of course, the trains I took both ended up running late (this is Ireland, after all), which delayed my arrival. For the first time in a very long time, I was unable to contact anyone to let them know. I could send no texts, receive no texts, make no calls. For four hours, nobody I knew could speak to me. It was weird. If aliens had chosen that moment to appear out of the clouds and abduct me, my family would never have known. If I had been inspired in that moment to tap out a particularly beautiful text message to a loved one, it would have had to go unsent. Truly, it was a tragedy of the technological age.

As well as my train-journeying, I was supposed to be meeting some old schoolfriends over the weekend. Naturally, then, I needed my phone in order to make plans, change plans, break plans, or whatever. ‘Typical,’ I fumed, raging at my phone’s tiny screen. ‘You work fine for months on end when I don’t really, truth be told, need you; just when you become indispensable, you decide to go belly-up!’ Somewhere in there is an important life lesson, even if I haven’t quite separated it out from all the crimson fury just yet. I was surprised at the depth of my own anger, to be honest. It seems silly that a small lump of plastic and glass could have such an effect on me, but there you are. It did.

Image: publicdomainpictures.net

And so, of course, my phone will have to be replaced. But the question is: what with?

So far into my telephonic life, I have resisted the lure of the smartphone. I have no need for such a device, I tell myself; all I want from a phone is the ability to make and take calls, and to send and receive text messages. I don’t want a phone which can run my life for me (despite the fact that I have trouble running it myself, sometimes), which is smarter than I am, or which is able to tell me what the weather is like in Kuala Lumpur at the drop of a hat. I am a troglodyte, and I want my phone to match. The phone I had – the one which has just broken – was a pretty ordinary model, but it did have a touchscreen, upon which its functionality depended; this touchscreen is the part which is now broken, which renders the whole thing useless. (This doesn’t sound all that smart, to me.) The phone I had before this one was a standard Nokia ‘brick’ – pretty much indestructible, easily able to survive being dropped down stairs or sat on for prolonged periods or being stored carelessly in a pocket – and I had it for about six years, without a problem. I was persuaded to ‘upgrade’ to the slightly fancier model less than a year ago, and now I find myself in my current predicament. In a way, this is entirely as it should be. Show me something sparkly and technological, and I bet I’ll have it broken (accidentally, of course) before the day is out.

It’s a strange situation, this. When I come to replace my broken phone, I am pretty sure that I will have to go with a smartphone. Phones are pretty much all morphing into mini computers, these days; it’s not easy to get a phone that just does phone-stuff, and none of the Personal Assistant-stuff. However, the ‘smarter’ a phone is, the more vulnerable it is, don’t you think? The more likely it is to break, or throw a hissy-fit, or be stolen, or sat on (because its flashy ultra-slim case is impossible to see, and it’s too light to make any sort of impression in your pocket, leading you to forget it’s even there at all); the more moving parts it has, the more likely it is to give you a nervous breakdown, is my philosophy. So, truly, the least smart thing I could do is purchase myself a smartphone.

I have a feeling that’s exactly what I’ll be doing, though. I won’t have a choice in the matter. It’ll be a case of ‘go smart, or go home.’

So, today will be about bowing to the inevitable, and spending uncomfortable amounts of money on something at which I will squint, and mumble, and swear under my breath for months to come. Occasionally, perhaps, I will make a call on it or send a message, though this remains to be seen. In a way it’s sad that my new phone will be a piece of technology more powerful than the rocket which brought men to the moon; I will probably use it for scheduling the time at which I get out of bed in the morning and for throwing irritable feathered things at stupid porcine things. I just hope I get slightly more than a year out of it, or there will be trouble…

This is more like it!
Image: welcometolensville.wordpress.com

On the upside, it might make checking my online life (swiftly growing more interesting than my real-life life) a bit easier, and I’ll certainly be able to keep you all apprised of any impending alien abductions.

I hope you all had wonderful weekends, stress-free and technologically unchallenged, and that you’re fresh and ready for a new week. Happy Monday!

Appreciation

I don’t have a lot of time to write today, either – and it’s possible this will be my last blog of the week.  Where I’m going (i.e. the deepest, darkest countryside!), they don’t have a reliable internet connection…

I wanted to devote this short note to saying ‘thank you’ to everyone who has taken the time over the past month or so to check in here and keep me company.  Last night, this blog ticked over into the 2,000s – in other words, more than 2,000 people have looked at it since I set it up just about five weeks ago.  I can see that a lot of my readers come from Australia and Canada, several in the United States, India, Pakistan, Korea – even Hong Kong! I’ve had people reading me in Switzerland, Belgium and – of course – my ‘home islands’, the United Kingdom, and my own beloved Ireland.  When I started this venture, I thought maybe my mother and my mother-in-law, along with some of my stalwart friends, would occasionally take a look at this blog, but that for the most part I’d be talking into a void.  Instead, I’ve ‘met’ wonderful people from all over the globe, and I’ve had the privilege of taking a peek into their lives and journeys via their own blogs, and it has been an exhilarating experience.

 
I don’t ordinarily count myself among those who think that technology is an indispensable part of modern life – usually, I fear we’ve lost something intimate and kind in this digital, screened age in which we live.  It makes me sad to see people preferring to look at their tablet than the real world, and it really makes me sad to see people texting, or otherwise using their ‘smart’phones, instead of engaging with another person.  In relation to this blog, however, I’m willing to admit my initial misgivings were far wide of the mark – you might remember one of my earliest blogs discussed my fears and insecurities around blogging.  I now know that writing here, gaining regular readers, commenters and friends, has been one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever been able to do.  Some of the kindest and most supportive feedback I’ve had on this blog has come from people who don’t know me, in the traditional sense, and for whom I’m just a collection of blobs on a website.  I truly couldn’t have imagined that so many people would want to read what I have to say, and I hope that my posts here will continue to be interesting.  I hope that, over the next few months, I’ll have lots to blog about, and it would be brilliant to have you all along for the journey.

Thank you all, most sincerely.  I’m just an ordinary gal, trying to do her best, and it’s so good to know I’m not the only one out there.  Have some flowers, and Happy Thursday!