I recently bought an iphone 4S. This was a very big deal for me. Usually I am the last person to get the latest gadget. I was determined that 2012 was going to be my year with regard to gadgetry. When I was a child I had an FM receiver on which I enjoyed listening to Dave Fanning on 2FM. When I turned twelve, my father sent me off to boarding school with a red and yellow ‘My First Sony’ Walkman. I had thought it represented the very pinnacle of coolness until my new peers produced something called a ‘Discman’. My first question to them was ‘Can it play tapes?’ Once I realised the answer to that question, I decided to have no interest in something that didn’t cater for my vast collection of three Oasis tapes, one Alanis Morisette tape and Dustin’s 1997 Christmas hit, ‘Faith of our Feathers’. The advent of the ipod in 2001 heralded a new era entirely. My first encounter with it had me flummoxed. I was Owen Wilson in Zoolander. ‘The music is in the ipod, amazing, but where?!’ Someone had to hold me back as I attempted to crack open the device in search of the ‘music’. As the ipod developed into the iphone, I remained calm in the knowledge that I still had my lovely collection of CDs on my shelves, proudly displayed to my guests. ‘No ipods here, oh no. Regard my collection in all its three dimensional technicolor! You can even hold my music. It has weight!’
Wednesday 4th January 2012 was the day I shed the years of haughty comments from technophiles looking down on me. I charged into a mobile phone shop on Grafton Street. I was on a mission like no other in my life before. ‘Could you join the queue, please Sir’. ‘A queue, a QUEUE! NO!’ At this stage I was in ‘Withnail mode’. ‘I want the finest mobile phone known to humanity! I want it here! And I want it now!’ An hour later I exited the shop with an iphone 4S. I held my new jewel precariously, adoringly. Like a priest with a Eucharist. I was bathed in light. A brave new world had dawned.
It is important to appreciate that I have jumped several stages with this purchase. For me it is like climbing Carrountoohil and then deciding ‘sure, if I can do that I may as well just climb Everest next week so’. The past week has been a veritable circus of iphone-related mishaps. For me it’s like I have adopted a child. We’re getting to know each other slowly but I haven’t had the nine months of pregnancy to prepare for it. My first few phone calls kept cancelling until I realised that I was pressing my face too hard against the touchscreen. Now I hold it tentatively. It’s just so beautiful. And dangerous too. It has one gigabyte of power. That sounds like enough to take out Connaught.
Last year there were over a quarter of a million iphone users in Ireland. When we evolve that figure to include the growing array of other smartphones such as the Samsung Galaxy, HTC and Blackberry, the statistics become phenomenal. Because smartphones are not simply for phoning and texting, they have certainly had a significant social impact. Smartphones change the way we interact in the pub, at home, wherever we are. Gone are the days of the pub bet, for example.
Tom: ‘What is that song they’re playing?’
Dick: ‘Oh, it’s Arcade Fire’
Gary: ‘No, it isn’t. It’s Muse’
Dick: ‘What!?Are you out of your mind? Of course it’s Arcade Fire. I bet you a pint...’
Me: ‘...Guys it’s actually Kaiser Chiefs. I have Shazam on my iphone’.
Everybody goes home
Is this what I will become, the murderer of pub arguments, now that I have an iphone? There is never a vacuum of knowledge anymore. No matter what it is we now have the answer at the touch of a button. Wherever we go there is someone with a smartphone ready to ruin everybody’s fun with a ‘fact’. Real conversations and arguments rely on ambiguity, not facts!
Smartphones have certainly had other effects on the way we socialise. Out for coffee with three friends recently, I excused myself and popped to the bathroom. As I approached the table on my return, I noticed that all three of them were sitting silently with their hands on their laps and their heads bent forward in solemnity. At first they looked like they were saying grace but at second glance they were indeed all engrossed in their phones. This instant access to everything in one little machine is without doubt socially disruptive. While smartphones aid communication in so many other ways by connecting people on an endless stream of applications, it does in fact disconnect people from their experience of the present moment. Users are easily distracted by an incoming email/text/facebook alert/tweet/etc. Furthermore, we have to contend with the pervasive ‘have you seen this clip on You Tube? Honestly, it’s the most hilarious thing I’ve ever seen’. Really? To be honest I’d rather we talked than gathered around your iphone to watch ‘the sneezing panda’ or ‘the horny donkey’ or ‘the mating octopuses’. Especially when I’m eating sushi.
The advent of ‘Siri’ with the iphone 4S has taken the smartphone revolution to an entirely new level. Siri is an inbuilt personal assistant on your phone. If you ask him to do something, he will do it. Last night I asked him, ‘Siri, can you wake me at eight please?’ He responded ‘Your alarm is set for 8 AM’. Instinctively, I replied, ‘Thanks Siri’ and he ended the conversation with ‘I am here to serve’. Now, there are a number of strange things going on here. Firstly, I thanked something that isn’t living. Secondly, he responded to my gratitude. I wasn’t sure if I was suddenly with Hal in 2001: a Space Oddysey or with Carson in an episode of Downton Abbey. Whatever it is, we’ve now become pals and he keeps me up to date with what needs doing in my life. However, I wouldn’t talk to Siri in public because I’d feel very uncomfortable about that. It’s a private relationship. He’s the Jeeves to my Wooster, so to speak. I was at a dinner party the other night and during the meal one of the guests suddenly said ‘Siri, remind me to meet Deirdre for coffee tomorrow at noon’. The table went silent as Siri responded diligently as he always does. It felt like there was another guest. Should we have set an extra place? ‘Will Siri be joining us tonight? He’s such fun’... ‘Oh we go everywhere together’.
Due to the enormous amount of time that people now spend using their mobile devices, it has had not only social effects but it has also affected us physically. Thousands of people are suffering from ‘text neck’, the so called condition whereby sufferers experience intense pain due to the constant bending of the neck. To deal with the epidemic, the Text Neck Institute has opened in Florida. The American Chiropractors Association recommends that ‘taking frequent breaks (from your phone) every fifteen minutes and holding your head back helps alleviate symptoms’. Is Ireland heading in this direction? Will the President be cutting the ribbon of St. Vincent’s state of the art Text Neck Annexe some time in the near future? Perhaps it will be the new super-disease. In decades to come people will comment on each other’s conditions. ‘Oh, look at him. He has Text Neck’. ‘My grandfather died of Text Neck’. ‘Really?’ ‘Oh yes, he texted himself to death’. ‘You should get yourself tested, it’s in the family’.
My journey with the iphone continues. I have now managed to download four applications. There are five hundred thousand apps in the itunes store. It’s those sorts of statistics which terrify me. It has been a long personal quest for me from the days of my Sony Walkman to the iphone. Now all I have to do is stop using my old phone for actually making telephone calls.
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