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!