A short list of reasons why I hate the i-phone

1) Because I am a romantic, I write letters. Sometimes with actual paper. Sometimes I even go to the trouble to send post-cards which I bought long ago and which have a sort of antique-ish feel. I assume these efforts are lost on those who would prefer the instant gratification of knowing immediately what exactly I was feeling and whether or not I was to ride unto Stanton Estate post haste. It's Austen I'm parodying here. Have you ever read Austen? Most of those novels are based on the idea of a woman waiting for a letter. That is the whole key to the suspense of the thing, the reader wondering what Willoughby's letter will say and whether or not it will cause some waifish heroine to catch typhus and die.

2)I have gotten a few of these lately-- "Dear John for reasons which I cannot fully disclose to you for fear I might hurt the future of our [blah blah blah, insert cryptic commentary here] I must insist that we cease our [etc.] Love, [so and do] sent from my i-phone." It's that last bit that always gets me. I picture this person (whom I may or may not care deeply about) sitting there typing this drivel into tiny little keys on a tiny little screen, all the while just hoping that the sword will work it's way appropriately into my heart and that I won't bother them anymore with these horrible letters that I write, the last of which may just arrive in the mail days after this message was "sent from my i-phone", embarrassing the writer (me) permanently. Apparently, you CAN get rid of this shameless shout-out to the apple company, a corporation whose focus is not software but sexy design of hardware and making things "easier" for the user who will no longer have any choice in what happens regarding their technology. However, people don't want to get rid of the "sent from my i-phone" because it reminds everyone that they are a member of a new proud generation that is forward thinking and will surely be the first to have i-phones implanted in their brain when apple unveils the new "i-cranium." To me, "sent from my i-phone" just means you typed this on a tiny little keyboard, and the emotions there, if there were any there to begin with, seem suddenly devoid of import with the addition of the little electronic signature. How would Bergman's letter to Bogart have been different if instead of "I cannot see you now or ever again" appeared on a tiny little handheld screen instead of tear streaked paper which showed the flowing cursive of her unforgettable character? How would he have crushed the letter in anger? Would he have thrown his iphone across the room? Probably not-- those things cost 300 $!

3) The other day I was gallivanting around San Francisco with my friend Ritik the doctor, a crime-fighting superhero who solves mysteries with his iphone, who also gives directions and can draw you a map. I have always wanted to "gallivant" and it seemed possible with our new technology. At one point Ritik got hungry and asked if I wanted to go get lunch. "I could eat" I said. He then whipped out his iphone and reported to me that "people [were] raving about the Vietnamese barbecue chicken available down the street. I pumped approximately 80 dollars in quarters into the meter and then Ritik's iphone led us to the little hole in the wall where this miraculous food was available. I told him that I was more enamored of the idea that one could "know a little place down the street" and be considered heroic and in-the-know by those who should choose to help themselves to a minimum share of the bill via flattery. He told me that he thought his way was more democratic, but I still felt something vaguely disgusting and absurd about it, and this didn't help my already developing suspicion of the i-phone. We ate; it was delicious as the i-phone predicted, and it was only a matter of minutes before the i-phone saved the day again, when two confused people without iphones asked us for directions. Ritik and the iphone asked them to pull over and the guy whipped out some kind of paper and flashed it as if readying himself for an attempt at stapling it to the door like one would an important document such as an arrest warrant, eviction notice or a treatise against established religion. It had a picture of a marijuana leaf on the front, which he did not attempt or offer to try to explain, and I thought "now I see why this guy's lost." He stared in our general direction, mouth agape while Ritik, along with his ipod, saved the day. If this guy got lost again, he could stop in another 3 blocks and ask the next guy with an ipod. Nearby, some guy's ipod was was telling him of a traffic situation ahead where someone was blocking a lane asking for directions. It wasn't the ipod I was mad at, nor was it Ritik saving the day as always, it was the assault on my established way of life. I liked that Ritik held the answer, the perpetual dispenser of wisdom, a veritable guru with his iphone and all. Ritik used to be at the top of a mountain, available only to those who wished to go to great effort to seek him, whereas now, he's available wherever i phones are sold.


4) Later we were walking around in Golden Gate Park and looking for my friend Asa. I won't dwell over the fact that Ritik's iphone was able to lead us directly to Asa's phone, because that was kind of convenient; I have to be honest. What was weird was that Ritik's phone was able to identify a song that we were hearing in the background once he told his iphone that his level of pop knowledge was getting dangerously low and he wanted the phone to tell him what song was on the radio. It may or may not have identified correctly the song "my humps" being played in the background. Every song pretty much sounds like that song to me. I asked Ritik what his phone would say if we just allowed it to listen to the hippy drum circle taking place nearby. Would it be able to tell us how stoned they were? As we looked up the answer to a question someone had posed, there was a shirtless hairy chested he-manlike character twirling a sword-like object dangerously around for his own amusement apparently, as there was no little tip jar at his feet. A nearby gawker made a shocked grimace and looked at us with an expression that asked "is this guy weird or what?" which is a question we could have used the phone to look into. The gawker said something judgemental like "that's silly" and we noticed that he had a pet chicken sitting under his bench as he said this. I'm sure that right as we remarked about the situation, somewhere there was a programmer developing an application for the iphone capable of detecting irony. "what's it gonna take before people understand each other?" I said, half expecting Ritik to look it up on the iphone.
None of this was objectionable of course because the theatre of the absurd has always been a constant source of entertainment for me. I didn't like however that it was all basically geared toward making it easier for people to consume. You like that song? You don't even need to know music or be hip or spend a lot of time reading reviews of new artists to download it on your iphone. You just tell your iphone that you like those pretty noises in the distance and it will listen to them then direct you to itunes where you can purchase the song you like. Also, no longer will co-incidence come into play when you bump into your old climbing partner Asa in Golden Gate Park. No longer will you be able to think "wow that was cool seeing him here" because your iphone knows where all of your friends are at all times. No one will ever be able to cheat on their spouse again because of the popularity of the "where you at?" function.

5) The iphone eases loneliness artificially. We're busy people. We don't have time to actually talk to other people, face to face, whenever we want. Not when it's easier to just text them. LMAO! Phone ads have relayed the idea of "circles" of people we interact with. We have the inner circle and the inner inner circle and the people who are not allowed to see our whole facebook profile which includes the photos from the drunken spring break. The iphone makes it really easy to twitter our most mundane thoughts over to those outer circle people and help us to feel connected. But people never share anything intimate about themselves over the internet, and so when you end up conversing with someone face to face the conversations adopt the tone of status update blurbs, and slowly but surely, we lose the faculty of real intimacy with those closest to us, and we will have to then pay instead, for therapy.

On my drive home from the Bay Area I stopped over at my Uncle's in Half Moon Bay. He works with technology in his job at Stanford and spends a lot of time analyzing how technology affects the way we all communicate and how technology can be applied to postmodern literature. He is a genius. His rebuttal for "sent from my iphone" is that it's an excuse for typos and shit. Does this also excuse stuff you say in anger or stuff you say without really thinking first? Does it excuse things left unsaid? "Happy belated birthday" not sent from my i-phone. Pretty soon our iphone will save everyone's birthdays and send them an ecard to their iphone or maybe a clumsy not as cool text to their inferior phone(s), which will eliminate the need to genuinely care about anyone's birthday enough to force them to get drunk ever again. We have work the next day.