Technically Ambivalent

I've grown up in the era of technology, where life is unimaginable without the Big Brother Internet, the ubiquitous cell/smart phones and endless other gadgets and devices that make you wonder, really question, that what you were doing with your life before the tech-epidemic was merely exist. It is only now that you have learnt how to experience anything.

Just like everything else, I don't buy that. Not fully. For me, that question is an answer of both yes and no.

I've owned a cell phone ever since I entered college (under graduate) and customised it to serve my needs. Which it did, very efficiently. I took utmost care of it, being my first phone and all. Its sudden hardware malfunction 18 months later also resulted in a major heart break and I replaced it with a device as like it, as possible. I warmed up to it eventually, but that sense of attachment was a bygone feeling. And I shrugged it off as a sign of growing up. Two years after, I needed a replacement again. But this time, it was not simple need that dictated the decision. There was more.

After saving meagre sums of regular and special allowances for years, it was finally possible for me to invest it in a device of some reckoning. And it seemed a commendable decision to invest that amount in an Apple product, the holy grail of technology and of course, experience. 

Until then, I was strictly opposed to the idea of accessing Internet on the phone. I was just in college and didn't have any deal-breaking or life-changing emails to send or receive and whatever endless information I needed to access could wait until I reached the safe environs of a desktop and home. It seemed too much of a disturber of peace to have one device be something of a be-all and end-all.

Six months later, eight to be precise, I couldn't agree more. The iPhone experience has transformed the way I do things, truly. Some apps, especially one like Evernote, I cannot stop gushing about. Even this very post has been written on Evernote on my iPhone, and that's where I do whatever little writing I have done, in the past few months. And it did help to have Internet on the device when my home Internet was down over the weekend and I had a couple of important emails to send and receive. Also, I must acknowledge that keeping in touch has become easier with the era of Internet-enabled smart phones. However, I vociferously believe that no matter how smart our phones get, and how crazy our lives, texting and calling will be the two most primary uses of a cell phone. We might invent innovative and cost-effective ways of texting and calling, but these conventional means will remain unabated. 

Despite this utility value, I wonder how different (read simple) my life would have been without these services.