Today I went shopping for a smartphone.
As of right now, I have a semi-dumb phone that can make all my texts and access some parody of the internet, and even once in a while I use it to make phone calls to other real people. I have no real problem with the phone; with the exception of the inevitable temper tantrums that all the machines I own seem to throw it works quite well. However, for various reasons, I decided to take the step and move into this strange handheld collective world in which everyone else seems to be cheerfully participating.
This is kind of a big deal for me, for complicated reasons of superstition and cyborg anxiety that I hope one day to explore. Suffice it to say that watching people chat not with other people through the phone but with the phone itself makes me visibly and uncontrollably nervous. (I have several friends that find it amusing to team up with their cohort Siri to exploit this tic of mine. I love my friends very dearly.) I myself have been in the past incapable of figuring out how these devilmachines function. When attempting to use a borrowed one I'm generally reduced to helpless flailing and pawing at the screen like a sad animal until the savvy owner takes pity on me and dials the phone number or what have you.
It turns out that this is a real disadvantage when trying to be a wise consumer selecting a smartphone for purchase. If I am overwhelmed by sheer panic at just the sight of any flippy animated screen with higher resolution than the outside world that may or may not been able to read (or at least infer) my thoughts, how in the devil am I supposed to qualify and evaluate the differences among these damn things? Comparing them on a website with nice side-by-side boxes of written out specs is one thing. Holding even the 3 generation old model in my had and knowing this machine is smart enough to do anything but I am too dumb to tell it how is something completely different. Why am I doing this again? Haven't I consumed enough sci-fi to realize never to volunteer for the omnipresent, omnipotent, life-easing upgrade?
[Interesting and slightly troubling sidenote: A large part of the reviews of the HTC One X, one of the phones I was considering, are these weird exultations by former iPhone users that read like escapes from bad relationships: "i love love loooove my HTC. i used to stick with iPhones because even though i was never a big fan i figured i could never get anything better but then i made the leap with this [hone and its so great! i would never even consider going back to iphone" "This phone is great. It never gives me any problems...I never even think about iPhone anymore!"]
And how exactly am I supposed to explain all this to the pleasant young man standing at my shoulder just trying to earn his commission? I'm sorry excuse me sir I'm just having a bit of existential confusion about my commitment to my cyborg identity. No no I know I'm up for an upgrade I'm good for another two years yes. Yes no I heard you about the megapixels thing but it's just is it better? Will it make me better? How much of my soul can it capture in high def? And do I have to download it or can I stream it?
This post would have had a better punchline if I were publishing it with some wry acceptance from a smartphone. But, all things considered, I made what I thought was the best decision in the situation: retreat. Live to fight another day, maybe postpone the Singularity that much longer (ha, unlikely).
[Alternate ending: I'm secretly a robot!]
Will end by reiterating my cyborg anthem, Regina Spektor's "Machine":
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