i am a fairly geeky guy (if it wasn’t obvious). but before i had an iPhone i had never sent a text message. i just couldn’t see the enjoyment in hitting the #2 three times to type the letter C. my phone didn’t get email so it really was just a phone. while that’s great for voice conversations, i had email for something less synchronized and i figured i had my bases covered. well, i upgraded to an iPhone as soon as the price dropped big on the first generation. i didn’t have anyone to text at first, but we soon bought my wife an iPhone as well. that’s when things took off. then, Apple opened the app store, which allowed us to customize our phones like never before. i haven’t gone overboard, but i do have 4 pages of apps added to my iPhone and i frequently delete apps that i find i am not using after trying them for a spell.
last year, we went to Europe for a few months. my wife and i took our iPhones and they were great, but we had to pay a bundle to have audio and also web access while in Europe. last week, we went to Canada and our trip was about hiking and canoeing and exploring the northern shores of Lake Superior (we even saw a bear).
a black bear
i decided we’d leave our iPhones turned completely off. this was a back to nature vacation and i didn’t want to be bothered with work and the other nuances of life for a spell. turns out, this was asking quite a lot. i hadn’t realized how ingrained my phone had become into my life. even little things like using it as a watch for the time were missed. i didn’t realize how often i check my email as i would habitually reach for my pocket to grab my iPhone only to find it was not there. each morning, i use my iPhone to check the weather forecast for the day. i like to scan through twitter updates periodically as well. i check the headlines a few times each day. i typically log into my bank to see my credit card activity and then off to check the stock market and a few individual stocks i follow. i am also a bit obsessed with checking currency exchange rates, which is even better to do while vacationing in another country. yet, i had access to none of this. and. it. was. difficult. “honey, where do you want to eat” my wife would ask. “just a minute and i’ll jump on Yelp to see what’s around” — not available. doh!
i didn’t realize how wired i was. it’s just become a part of me. and losing my connectivity felt a bit like the time i had been on broadband for more than a year and then moved to a new house that only had dial-up (summer of 2000). at least with dial-up i still had access, but it was so slow compared to broadband that i’d frequently just wait until i got to the office for any real work. but to drop my iPhone entirely was even more difficult. i love instant access. love it. and, for those of you wondering . . . yes, i really enjoyed our vacation and had a grand time roughing it. i just didn’t anticipate that it would be so difficult to go without being wired for just over a week. that’s a long, long time in these days of everything being instantaneous.
is it bad that we’re becoming so dependent on these technologies?