Phones

It's very cool to be old. People like me were raised in a totally different world than the one that now exists, but we get to live in this one.

Smartphones have been around for only 8 years, and Google has been present for 17.

That means that for anybody in their mid-teens, it is as if smartphones have always existed, and for anybody up to their mid twenties, there has always been Google

It also means that people my age managed to live their lives for 42 long years without reference to “The Google,” and for whom over 50 years were smartphoneless. (oh the horror)

This can be seen in how people use technology, especially the old ones.

Let's take an example. You see two people, both alone on a subway train or ferryboat. They are sitting reading. One is reading a newspaper, and the other is using their iPhone to access the same type of information. Which person is older? Which one has up-to-date news?

This is not universal, of course. I am an old fart, but haven't bought a newspaper in decades. Free ones get delivered in our mailbox, but it is an incredibly rare event that I crack one open. My age does show in that I do purchase a couple of print magazines a year. Did you know that the magazine industry totters on the edge of collapse? Twenty years ago it flourished, but I digress.

Old people also don't seem to understand what smartphones are for. They think such phones to be similar to those things that used to be attached by wires to the walls in our houses. They are not.

My old friends tend to use their phones to talk to people. These people do not text. Young people do not use their phones for speech, at least for quick messages. They text. They use voice on their phones for long gab fests only.

I got rid of my cell phone. I only rarely used it for anything, and that was only to text back and forth with my wife; which was expensive.

I don't like expensive, especially for such a limited device. As I only texted with Helen, and she had an iPhone, I got an iPad Mini that can hook up to cellular data networks. Doing so is amazingly cheap if one limits how much data gets used. Most months I pay the minimum, which is $10. With this I am able to send an effectively unlimited number of messages (texts) to other users of Apple devices, such as my wife. It has become my “phone” if you will, but it does not do voice at all. It could if I bothered to set it all up, but I don't because I'd never use it.

My sister and her husband are about our age, but they use technology in the manner of much older people, rather than younger. They each carry a phone, mostly to communicate with one another. They do not text, nor do they even know if their devices can text.

Texting is better. Let's say you are in the coffee shop, with a friend, and a call comes in. Normal procedure is to pull the phone out, and to engage in a conversation with the caller that interrupts your conversation with your companion, and generally irritates everybody nearby. You could have let the phone call go to voice mail, but nobody does that. When the phone rings it must be answered.

For me at a coffee shop with a friend, if a text comes in, there is no imperative to deal with it immediately. I will hear the alert sound, and can choose to ignore it. At a convenient moment, I can excuse myself if something important is expected, and glance at the text to see if it needs to be dealt with. Let's say it's my wife telling me where and when to pick her up. I can respond with a single keystroke, “k,” without being unnecessarily rude to my companion, or being noticed at all by the surrounding patrons.

It is true that many are unable to resist the siren call of an incoming text, or insist on composing long-winded responses, but this is not the failure of the technology.

We have a good friend who also carries an iPhone. She uses it both for talk, and for text, but her messaging skills are from another era. She tends to compose texts as if they were letters, and would never dream of sending more than a single text to any one person on a given day. Who would send more than one letter per day to anyone? Very annoying if somebody is trying to set up a lunch date.

When my wife got her iPhone, we found ourselves paying the phone companies for three devices; her phone, my iPad, and our home phone (called a landline these days).

We needed our mobile devices, but did we need our landline any more? The potential hassles that loomed were the loss of our main phone number, and an inability to dial 911 in an emergency. These two things stop many from switching.

Did you know you can switch your phone number over to your smartphone without any hassle at all? We still have the same phone number we've always had.

The 911 nonsense was in effect when we made our switch. As I had never, ever dialed 911 in my life, I figured we would be reasonably safe. Since then, 911 response has been introduced to cellular service, so even this is no longer an issue.

It's funny how many of our (older) friends know that Helen's cell is our only phone, but they'll still ask when we'll be home so they can call us. Of course, it doesn't matter at all where we are, as Helen's phone is always with her, so she gets every call whither at home, or out shopping, or riding her bike.

I still don't understand why landlines can't do texts.