The 33% not thrilled by their phones

Three out of the four of us acquired new cell phones yesterday.  33% of those recipients are not thrilled about it.

I'm in that 33%.

I was a late adopter of cell phones.  Having a thing that I could pack around all the time to take calls didn't strike me as something that I wanted to do, and my early experiences with people who thought they were the niftiest thing ever didn't do much to change my mind on that.  But, due to work and the adoption of technology in business, I ended up having to do it, taking at first one of my wife's cast off phones.

Following that, I was slow to adopt the smart phone.  I just wasn't that impressed.  But there came a time when I was tracking settlement negotiations in a case and found I was hindered without one. So on came the Iphone.

I just upgraded my Iphone to the Iphone 5s.  Not because I feel I must have the latest and greatest, but rather because as my Iphone 4 aged, and as new programs for Iphones seemed to come on at a steady speed, its battery life was down to way too short.  As I have adopted the use of the phone for electronic airline tickets, a feature I do indeed like, and as I travel around in that role a fair amount, this was becoming a problem. So I decided to upgrade to a new phone which will hopefully have a longer battery life.

My wife, and now my son, take care of all phone stuff as I'm way too disinterested in phones to bother with them, and as they really like cell phones. So when upgrading, they found a whole bunch of upgrades were available for their phones, and now there are three new smart phones in the family, only one of which is an Iphone.

They're thrilled, but they're bothered that I'm not thrilled.  And I'm not.  Its hard to get excited about a piece of equipment that I was never keen on in the first place and which intrudes on things at every hour of the day, everywhere.  I recognize what a brilliant piece of technology they are, but having an Iphone is sort of like having Steve Jobs following me around all day, eating in my kitchen, and screaming messages at me whether I want them or not.  The features I really like on the, the ability to get podcasts and listen to music, don't have much to do with the phone part.

It isn't that I don't like some of the things smart phones have brought to us.  I do.  I like the fact that text messaging, and the fact that everyone carries these things everywhere anymore, mean that I can catch up with my family, and vice versa, nearly effortlessly.

But there's no denying that cell phones have brought work into the home, and been a factor in the 24 hour a day work place as well.  And they mean that conversations that can wait of all types, now have to take place instantly.

Yesterday afternoon, I was high in the mountains at a cattle camp, and while there, there was a conversation about cell phones, and which ones sort of work on the mountain, and which ones don't.  Satellite phones even came into the conversation.  While I didn't say it, the fact that there's no cell phone service up there strikes me as a good thing, and while I know that day is ending, and will end soon, I'll be sorry to see it end. And it's hard not to look back to an era well within my memory when there were no cell phones, and a lot of places in my world were much remoter.  I miss that.