As You Like It: The Me Phone

Those of you who have been reading my columns through the years know how enthusiastic I am about embracing any new technology that comes along. I love the newness, the challenge, the unexplored frontier. There’s nothing I relish more than learning that a device that I depend on everyday to make my life easier is being upgraded with new bells, whistles and an entire drum and fife corps. Yep, that’s me, drooling at the thought that I will be spending weeks figuring out yet another plastic piece of buttons and frustration.

To the advertisers’ credit, though, they no longer mention time-saving when describing some new piece of software, because they know that it’s going to take most of us a long, long time to learn how to use their newest creation. Instead they wax eloquent on how it will expand your life and your ability to live it. You will move on a cloud of information that seamlessly ties your life together so that you can text, tweet, blog, and cook a roast simultaneously.

Still, I do covet some new technology. I enjoy my Kindle. It’s wonderful not having to lug a heavy book to work each morning. However, that enjoyment is tempered by the fact that I have to keep an eagle eye on the battery icon. I’ve had mornings when I turn on my book to find that it has turned off because I haven’t powered it up the night before. Things like that don’t happen with a real live book.

Smarter than their owners?

This latest rant is the result of having to upgrade my phone. My new phone is now smarter than I am or will ever be. My old phone was getting old and quirky (kind of like me), not receiving calls or voicemails till hours after they had been sent, and whispering its ring so that I never heard it unless I taped it to my ear. Work has also become more complicated so that I have to check emails throughout the day.

Earlier in the year Lisa had gotten a new phone when her contract had run out. They were offering a free smart phone and reduced data package fee so we took it. I kept thinking that I should get one as well, but I was feeling particularly over- hassled, and the thought of the month-long learning curve daunted me. I figured that the company would offer a similar package in a few months and I would upgrade then. However, unbeknownst to me, the company would be introducing a new smart phone and so would not be offering any new deals for a while.

Steve had done his research and found out that the best phone that we could afford was the low-end Apple iPhone. So suddenly I was the owner of a sma-h-t new device that could do so many things that I was completely intimidated, outsmarted, and incredibly nervous to even touch the damn thing. I was thinking that maybe I should be getting that PhD that I had been thinking about, if only to keep up with my phone.

I spent just enough time with the salespeople to shred the last of my already fragile ego to bits, then left holding my new device nervously and with the appropriate awe. When we got home I searched through the box desperately looking for the manual. My usual routine when I get a new phone is to sit at the kitchen table with said phone and manual and spend a few hours figuring it out.

Alas they no longer include a manual. All you get are a few tiny pages to “quick-start” you, then you are directed to go online. I grumpily found the website, only to discover that it basically regales you with all the neat stuff that you can buy to play even more joyfully with your phone. “But I need directions!” I screamed.

Shatz suggested that I look up a generic user guide online, and thank goodness that worked. He also wondered, only half jokingly, if an “iPhone For Dummies” book had been published. I was beginning to hope so. I spent some time on the site, learning the basics: how to text, take a picture, retrieve voice mail, fricassee a chicken, and then proceeded to spend the next week feeling like a total idiot.

How have we gotten to such a state that merely answering your phone has become a vehicle for utter embarrassment? I’ve spent the week apologizing to people for looking like a jerk, explaining that I’m learning a new phone. Their responses have ranged from eye rolling from the younger set, to utter respect from the older generation who have shared their new-phone horror stories or confessed that they need a new phone but are terrified of getting one.

I have learned that my phone’s touch pad is so sensitive that if I breathe on it incorrectly I am calling the police station – that no matter how long I search on my online manual to solve a problem, the only sure way to get a question answered is to find a citizen of the younger and cooler generation to solve it for me. They were born with these phones in hand.

And I? I was born in another world with rotary phones, dials and knobs and plugging things in and using them without an advanced degree. I’m so doomed.

Short URL: https://www.thecantoncitizen.com/?p=6234

Posted by Joan Florek Schottenfeld on Jun 29 2011. Filed under As You Like It, Featured Content, Opinion. Both comments and pings are currently closed.