My cellular telephone is currently broken following an unfortunate canoeing accident.
This means that I am not longer enjoying the benefits of an iPhone*, but rather struggling to navigate the murky controls of Dr. Roommate’s old Blackberry. There are so many little icons and I have to roll a little ball around just to find them. It took me an hour to figure how to actually make a call with it. I still don’t know how to text. A trained monkey would do better with the Blackberry. No joke.
When I really start to think about it, my mind is boggled by the thought that this technology that currently frustrates me is actually far more advanced than the phone I was using a mere year ago. But all that one did was make calls. The Blackberry can do more than that. A lot more.
Not that I can figure out any of it.
And my iPhone was just as unruly a multi-functional beast. But as fat as my thumbs are, at least I knew how to use it.
This leads me to conclude that Apple technology, while something of an emotional safe-haven for us who lack the ability to figure out electronic gadgets, might actually be dumbing down society.
Why, Apple, why do you have to create products that are so damn easy to use?
*A week without it led me to realize that the only apps I really use (in descending order) are: Wikipedia, Instagram, and Text Messaging. I don’t think I ever use it to make actual calls.
I divide my time between a variety of poverty-inducing ventures: writing for fun and writing for torture; watching far too many movies and reading far too few books.
I have lived previous incarnations as bookseller, bureaucrat, filmmaker, zinester, student, and wayward traveller. I studied Film at Langara after seven years at Simon Fraser entrenched in English, Archaeology and about every other Liberal Arts and social science topic you can imagine.
I am very good at Trivial Pursuit.
I am related to Dr. Samuel Johnson, writer of the first English dictionary, which explains my perfect spelling and penchant for black cats.
I once lived in a house in the South Hill neighbourhood of Vancouver with six people, four cats, one goldfish, and a vegetable garden for a front yard. We called it The Commune. It was where I lived with my husband before he was Husband, before he was Fiance, before he was Boyfriend, back when he was just Boy Roommate. Life was a sitcom and we were the “will they/won’t they.”
We did.
Once we ran away to England because we like having adventures. But we didn’t like it that much, so we came home again.
I have the personality of a superhero’s alter-ego. Only I don’t fight crime. At least not yet.
I am currently obsessing over romantic comedies and hosting murder mystery dinner parties (online these days, of course!).
View all posts by Ashleigh Kay
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3 thoughts on “How Apple Products Will Bring About a Dystopian Future”
How large a step is it from a dependency on a small, hand-held device to dependency on the Matrix…?
😉 <– (indicating a self-awareness of the simultaneous ridiculousness/reality of the above statement)
Hey Ash! It’s funny that you post this because I just got a new phone yesterday. And it wasn’t a Blackberry or iPhone or anything, but I was struck by the design of the current phones on the market. They aren’t for calling at all. It’s all about texting. My new phone has a slideout QWERTY keyboard, no less. It also looks like the phone an 11 year old girl would have died for circa 2003. I feel the female version of emasculated…
How large a step is it from a dependency on a small, hand-held device to dependency on the Matrix…?
😉 <– (indicating a self-awareness of the simultaneous ridiculousness/reality of the above statement)
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Ironically, I tried to post a comment on this with my iphone and failed. Twice. It may be making us stupid, but it’s also making me angry.
I forgot my phone at home recently, and almost got hopelessless lost downtown. My iPhone has killed my natural sense of direction.
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Hey Ash! It’s funny that you post this because I just got a new phone yesterday. And it wasn’t a Blackberry or iPhone or anything, but I was struck by the design of the current phones on the market. They aren’t for calling at all. It’s all about texting. My new phone has a slideout QWERTY keyboard, no less. It also looks like the phone an 11 year old girl would have died for circa 2003. I feel the female version of emasculated…
Phones are, well, complicated.
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