My wife likes to tell me that I’m a techno nerd. I would deny it if I could. Oh wait, this is my blog, so I CAN deny it. I’m not a techno nerd. I just appreciate good hardware.
Now that we have that handled, I wanted to share a few thoughts on some technology that apparently has become so crucial that we can no longer live without it.
I’m talking about cell phones of course.
Yeah, there have been lots of posts about cell phones. It used to be that people complained about how rude it was for those who couldn’t shut their mouths walking around everywhere talking on their cell phones loudly. Now, it seems that people are usually walking around texting everyone, and running into things. If they aren’t texting, ther’re walking around updating their facebook status, or sharing with the world where they are by “checking in”.
Although I’ve done this all, a few times at least, the fact remains that the device you are walking around with is a cell phone. With the emphasis on PHONE. You know, that thing that used to hang on the walls of our kitchen, had a round dial, and you used it to call your family and friends?
I fondly remember the days of getting in trouble for listening in on my sister’s conversations with her boyfriends, or getting yelled at for spending to much time on the phone. Why? Because there was no such thing as call waiting. You may not remember this, but if you were on your phone, and someone tried to call you, you would get a “busy signal”. Busy signals caused a lot of frustration, especially when you really needed to contact someone with important news. Like needing to be bailed out of jail. Thankfully, this has never happened to me. Or to spread gossip about family or friends. You know, Very Important News Stuff.
Because “busy signals” were so frustrating, the phone companies, who were viewed on the same level as satan, because of all their fees and hard to read bills, came up with a cool idea. Call waiting. This was a feature that allowed someone to call you while you were on the phone and instead of a “busy signal”, they would hear the familiar ringing like they weren’t on the phone. Of course, everyone had to have call waiting. And of course, people being people, they simply ignored the other person calling, which lead to more aggravation.
So someone somewhere got the idea that we just didn’t have enough time to talk on the phone because hey, we work all day long, run errands on the weekend, and basically, didn’t spend enough time at our homes to answer the phone, and hear all the gossip. So that person invented a device called a cell phone. It was a phone you carried around with you, so you could listen to your gossip no matter where you were. Like in the movie theatre. Or the line at the bank.
Of course, that wasn’t enough. Because soon people were spreading gossip in other ways. It was called e-mail and the internet. So naturally, it was soon discovered that we weren’t home enough to be on our computers so the cell phone involved into a device that connected to the internet, as well as being able to take phone calls. This lead to people spreading gossip by text, calls, and social media. Oh yeah, and telling the world what they were doing every minute of the day, because everyone knows that what YOU are doing is the most interesting thing in the world to everyone else. Even when you announce that you have to go to the bathroom. Or even putting everyone’s life around you in danger because you have to do all this while driving.
Personally, I think that this has led to most of us to become sincerely self absorbed. But that’s not why I’m sitting at my computer, ignoring Facebook and Twitter, typing out this post.
I still want to talk about cell phones.
You see, we have come so far with these devices, in our mad dash to be “connected” that someone missed a step.
The one where cell phones actually work very well as….. a phone.
Oh come on, you know what I’m talking about. Dropped calls, voices cutting in and out, cell phones that don’t work for very long before breaking down, that sort of thing. In the old days, when you had a phone hanging on your wall, the thing could be used to beat your children with, and the only time you couldn’t understand what the person on the phone with you was saying was when the kids were running around causing havoc in the house, which of course is how it was discovered your could use the hand held part of the phone to beat your children with, without breaking the thing. Those phone were almost indestructible. I think they indestructibility of these phone is what led Timex to come out with their line: “Timex, it takes a licking, but keeps on ticking”.
Maybe it’s just me, but is it really to much to ask to have a phone that actually can make a phone call without worrying about missing half the conversation, or dropping a call? Or suddenly deciding to break down on you after only owning it for three months? Especially when you consider how much I pay you every month and the trouble I have deciphering your cryptic bills.
So how about it Mobile Device Manufacturers? How about stop putting out new devices every month that bring exciting new options for connecting to social media, surfing the web, and fast download speeds, and come out with a phone that worked as well as the one that hung on my kitchen wall back in the 90’s. Some of us still use these mobile devices for TALKING, for business, that sort of thing.
I don’t care if it’s the device manufacturers fault or the fault of the network they are operating on (because I think it’s both because I have had a number of cell phones over the years).
I want a mobile device that will make a call and be able to have an actual phone conversation without missing words or dropping a call. Seriously.
