“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?
