I am a “gadget person”: a species known to anthropologists and Road Runner animators as Homo oohshinyus. As such, my natural habitat is marked by a thick underbrush of shielded wires and powder-coated aluminum, the dull amber phosphorescence of device standby LEDs, the warm, dusty respiration of cooling fans, and the din of synthesized alert beeps. That said, I am not an alpha of the species, and I do at times resist the mating call of a new device, especially if it is something that Annoying People get into before I do. This is what originally happened between myself and the mobile phone. But oh, how things change.
During the latter half of the Nineties, it was not difficult to hate cellular phones. Having just crossed the threshold of mass market affordability, they were still uncommon enough to be thought of by some suburban middle class dopes as minor status symbols. So, some of those who owned one — many of them otherwise rational adults — got carried away, and acted like a little girl clutching a lovely new doll, who insists on dragging it around behind her and talking to it everywhere she goes.
I wanted no part of it. Each fresh encounter with some nitwit jabbering into their phone, in a restaurant, at the movies, in the restroom, in the bedroom, and every other inappropriate place one can imagine, flushed my brain anew with loathing for the little bricks. Each unwelcomely eavesdropped call — held at the conversational volume of an Apache helicopter in order to ensure maximum rubbernecking from passersby, and consisting of dramatic soliloquies such as, “OH NOTHING; I’M JUST AT THE LIBRARY. WHAT ARE YOU DOING? YEAH? THAT’S GOOD. I KNOW, RIGHT? THIS RAIN…” — assured me further that the culture surrounding these devices was not for me. Besides, I told myself: I had no interest in being summonable by other people, wherever and whenever. Perhaps I imagined that I would be engaged in Thoreau-like escapes from civilization from which I would abide no interruption.
In hindsight, the truth was that, since I’m something of a jerk, no one ever really wanted to talk to me that badly, and why own a device whose main function would be to remind me of that with its perpetual silence and empty call log? Thus it was that what finally caused me to give in was having a girlfriend with a mobile phone of her own: someone who actually did want to talk to me. (Sometimes.) No big deal, went the rationalizations: We needed a way to communicate on the go in case of a change of plans. It could also come in handy in an emergency. I would just leave it turned off most of the time.
That is truly how it was, in the beginning, with the pre-paid phone I took on. But as time went by, its practicality in other situations (“I’m at the store, and what if she wants something? I could just call really quickly…”) caused it to develop slowly into a tumor upon my daily life: a gradually larger and more parasitic presence that was increasingly impossible to get rid of.
That was just the first stage. The girlfriend in question had a much nicer phone, which I, typical specimen of Homo oohshinyus that I am, lusted after. I already had successfully assimilated my little injection-molded Happy Meal toy of a pre-paid phone into my life. What could be the further harm in upgrading to one of the sleeker — and most importantly internet-enabled — phones? So I made myself the owner first of a BlackBerry Bold and then, eventually, an iPhone. My chrysalis stage of mobility was officially at an end.
So it has gone for a few years now, but I had never grasped the fullness of my metamorphosis until a recent day when I accidentally left the phone behind in my morning rush out the door. I was most of the way to work before the sudden realization of the phone’s absence bit me painfully like a horsefly would, yet still I briefly, madly, considered turning back to retrieve it.
What I discovered over the course of that day was that this device had clandestinely re-wired my brain to crave the regular input of instant, snack-sized parcels of social interaction. My mind periodically drifted to the text messages and “tweets” I was no doubt missing, and I found my fingers reflexively tensing. I kept feeling my phone vibrating in my pocket, like the phantom pain from a lost limb, and clapping my hand instinctively to my hip, only to pull it away again with a throat-clearing harumph of dismay and embarrassment. The void there had become nearly as palpable as the high-gloss onyx wafer it had replaced.
One might expect that my productivity at work increased as a result of the loss of this distraction, but no: it was even more conspicuous by its absence. With the phone by my side, I could do my work, content that if there was vital communication for me — let’s say, about that evening’s meal, or about a video of a funny cute kitty — I’d know without delay. Without it, the question of what I was missing, to say nothing of how my friends were reacting to my lack of replies, pecked at my consciousness like a nomadic itch. The next day, all was to normal again, or at least, to whatever state has become “normal” for me now.
I don’t hear as many loud yet mundane half-conversations in bathroom stalls these days, but I am still nearly sideswiped in my car by someone talking (or, worse, texting) on a mobile phone pretty much daily. I think that, from a wider perspective, we as a society have yet to graduate out of the New Doll Phase with mobile phones; we’re still just playing with them, marveling at their newness, and working out the proper way to integrate them into our lives without being too intrusive.
I suppose that, because of my earlier reluctance to take part, I’m playing catch-up compared with many of you. It is a position unfamiliar to your average Homo oohshinyus. All I know is that there is no going back for me now. At least, not that I’ve found in the App Store.
