View from the middle

Textwitface will never catch on.

March 31, 2010 at 12:39 am (I hate text, twitter and facebook., View from the middle)

I refuse to surrender to the shallow waste of time communication media that has a grip on the thumbs of the world. I choose to walk through life with my head up attentive to my surroundings rather than head down furiously thumbing my phone. I want to actually see the bus that runs me over while I’m crossing the street. I’m not sure you can even call it a phone anymore. It seems like calling and receiving calls is not really a priority for the new technology phones.

I have just been allocated a new phone for work. It is part of my job description to talk to people on the phone. I’m going to call it Monty. It seems to me like an instrument of mostly spam, and when I think about spam, I recall “spamalot” from Monty Python………….. I’m not sure why, but I felt compelled to take you on the “connect the dots” that is my thought process.

Monty is a sleek-looking hand-held marvel from BU&U.  I’ve changed the name to avoid shameless commercial promotion. Recall HAL from “2001 space odyssey”. Wow; “odyssey”, that’s a hard one to spell, and I’m a fairly accomplished speller. 12 years of nuns. I even had to read some of it in high school, “the odyssey” that is. Back to HAL. The next consecutive letter in the name spells IBM. You knew that. Again with the “connect the dots” in my head. I’m sorry about that.

A cursory glance at Monty gives you no indication that it is a phone. There is no ear-piece or mouth-piece visible. You also can’t see any numbers. I’ve had a cell phone since 1980 something. They used to have a button, usually green, that said “send, and another button, usually red, that said “end”, and a numeric keypad. Monty has nothing remotely resembling these ancient dinosaurs of telecom hieroglyphics. It doesn’t even say “phone” on the box!

I must say that it is very pretty. It is bright silver with black accents and a blue screen. Apparently, I can change the screen. I can put a picture of my kids on the screen. I see that a lot amongst Monty owners. I think I’ll put a picture of an old crank wall phone on my screen. That way I’ll know it’s a phone and not a photo album. I think I’ll go home when I want to see my kids. Maybe that’s why people put the kids picture there, they don’t get home much. Or when they do get home, they spend all of their time head down thumbing the Monty. That sounds sexual to me for some reason. I won’t connect the dots here. I would think that these devices would be a boom for chiropractors. We will soon start seeing a new type of chronic neck disorder that prevents you from looking up or any direction except down at Monty.  Another physical change that will come is an evolution of the human hand. We will no longer need fingers. That thing at the end of your arm attached to your wrist will start to resemble a mitten. There will be little suction cups on one side of the mitten like an octopus has. Our thumbs will also become thinner, more dexterous, and grow another joint.

My new Monty does not even come with an instruction manual. You have to download it from the world-wide web. I actually like that feature. I wonder if all new Monty’s are like that. It’s good for the environment. Save a tree you know. After you click around for a few minutes, you finally find your model and down load the instruction manual in PDF. I’m not sure what PDF means. I used to think it meant personal flotation device, but I realized I was being a little dyslexic there. Hey, where did the “a” in float  go? Don’t you love English. I feel so sorry for immigrants trying to learn English. I know one thing that PDF means. It means “pay me lots of money if you want to edit any of the text”. There are 156 pages of instructions for my new Monty. As I peruse the table of contents, I notice that there is very little about making a phone call. There are lots of the following, “Fn, QWERTY, SYM, Profiles, Settings, Sync, FDN, GPS, XM, UR Tones, AppCenter, MEdia, and Music”. I know what music means. I’m not sure why I need music on my Monty, but I am excited to get one of the answers right. I hope they are grading on a curve and there are monkeys in the class or else I’m doomed.

Now I know why everyone is going back to school. It has nothing to do with the economy, or the degraded job market or re-tooling our skills for the next millennium. It’s so we can get a degree in Programing Monty. I think that would qualify as a BS degree.

Monty is designed for “textwitface”, not calling your mom to say “hi” on Mothers day. I miss the old Monty. My trusty old friend that was mostly used to chat about when and where you were going to get together with people. You remember that. People used to talk to each other and actually get together in close proximity in the same room or park or ball game or restaurant. As we become more “connected”, we are actually creating a great disconnection with our fellow-man. Nobody really talks anymore. We don’t have to, we’ve got textwitface now.

I think I’ll invent a device with numbers, an ear-piece for hearing and a mouth-piece for speaking and that’s all. I’m going to call it a telephone. You push the numbered buttons, it rings, and someone says, “hello”. It will be something like the machine that Alexander Bell fellow designed long ago. Do you think anyone will buy it?

Good talk, S