Monday, December 1, 2014

Whither Must I Wander?

“What kind of phone do you have,” asked my brother John, after I had protested that I absolutely hated my phone, as does everyone else.

“A red phone,” I replied.

“My God,” he gasped. “Marc, how could you? Everybody knows that red phones are the worst!”

He was treating me with all the seriousness I deserve, since he knows perfectly well: I am the one person in the western world—OK, excepting Haiti—who cannot text. And what else can’t I do? Well, call Lady, for one thing, since her phone number has a six in it. And what happens when I press six on the dial pad? I get five.

So it’s cyber Monday, and now I have to buy some damn phone, and I hate phones because all I want them to do is call the people I want to call. Instead, the phone wants me to take pictures—I have a camera, thank you—and store music and receive emails. In short, if I get an iPhone, which everyone is telling me to do, I will be hyper-connected. And you know what? That is absolutely what I don’t want.

What I want is a butler, somebody who will make calls for me, and state gravely: “Mr. Newhouse desires to communicate with you….” Better, he’ll just give them a message, and then I’ll go back to listening to the Porpora cello concerto, which may not be all that great, but it’s better than learning about the iPhone, and by the way, do you know that somebody actually wrote this?

  

Wait a minute—and this is supposed to make my life better? And this being the day to buy electronics, why am I being asked to shell out over five hundred dollars for a contract-free phone? And what would I do with a contract-free phone? Could I call anybody with it? Or would I have to find my own contract? Or would I simply just have it, so I could join the rest of the world?

So now I have a red phone that dials five when I press six, and I’ve spent an hour on the Internet trying to figure out: which phone is best for an aging writer of little brain and less technological savvy? Oh, and then consider this, from Apple’s webpage:

Touch ID fingerprint identity sensor.
Put your finger on the Home button, and just like that your iPhone unlocks. Your fingerprint can also approve purchases from iTunes or the App Store.

Yeah? Just like that? Listen, Apple, did I ever say it was OK to have my fingerprint? And what else will you guys be doing with it? What happens when the National Security Administration decides to do a mass collection of fingerprints?

Oh, and by the way, are there fingerprint hackers? Seems like there should be, since my fingerprint would have to be digitalized—seems like a pun, I know—and so somebody in China or Russia could be ordering online with my fingerprint.

There was a day, dear Reader, and not too distantly, when phones just did one thing—call people or businesses. And your only decision was whether to get a white one or a black one. All right, there was this….

    

 Ah, the princess phone! I still see one every three months, since my shrink has one, and since having graduated from Harvard—in addition to being a shrink—my shrink’s self-esteem is unblemished by any taunts about the masculinity of any man with a princess phone. Nor am I one to taunt, because I had one too.

What I should do, of course, is completely educate myself so that I know exactly what I’m doing telephonically and can make superb, supreme decisions, perhaps involving ordering directly from the Apple plant in  China, or maybe having a disaffected worker smuggle one out. There’s got to be at least one disaffected worker, and shouldn’t a serious blogger be able to find one?

Yes.

No—but I did come across this:

The poor working conditions in these Chinese factories are the subject of a new documentary, "Who Pays the Price? The Human Cost of Cheap Electronics." The film follows the lives — and deaths — of workers, many of whom are teenagers, who fall gravely ill from contact with carcinogenic chemicals like benzene.
Or you might consider this:

The research, carried out by two NGOs, has revealed disturbing allegations of excessive working hours and draconian workplace rules at two major plants in southern China. It has also uncovered an "anti-suicide" pledge that workers at the two plants have been urged to sign, after a series of employee deaths last year.

Right, so now I am considering buying a smart phone that will make me feel stupid—I can just imagine it flashing a warning, ”Do you seriously want to destroy your entire contact list? Are you frigging crazy?”—and will make me feel guilty, knowing that somebody around the world suffered for me, and now can’t even off himself, since that would be a serious breach of contract.

Oh, and even if the guy who made my phone tried to kill himself, as a spate of people did a couple years ago? Well, no worries, because the factory owners got that one sorted out. Here’s what they did:


Yup—suicide nets!

What should I do? Go low-tech and get a TracPhone, or try to go high-tech, and get an iPhone? Well, I can tell you what I will do, since there is a Radio Shack on the corner of my block, and they were the guys who allowed me to buy a phone which now dials five when six is pressed. So they know that I am as fluent in technology as I am in Mandarin, and they will show me what undoubtedly is the best phone—for them, in terms of markup—and I will nod and try not to ask dumb question, such as, “where is the ‘on’ button?”

And everybody else will be downloading apps to clean their oven overnight with their cell phones—“activate this app, place your cell phone in the oven, and presto!”—and I? What will I be doing?

I’d love to tell you that I’ll jump fearlessly from the Nineteenth Century to at least the twenty-second, but why do I feel I don’t have a chance? Of course, I really should do what the sister of a friend does: she has no phone, but not a problem because she’s very chatty, and talks to everybody, and since people like to help, and people like her, well, no problem! So when she needs to call people? Well, she asks to borrow her new friend’s phone for a minute.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

See?

     




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