Lilypie

Friday, March 27, 2009

Cellphone : Want Or Need?

In this age of technology, having a mobile has become a basic necessity. What is luxury is the brand of mobile. In fact, having one that can take pictures and listen to music is already a necessity to most people. In the past mobile phones is just for convenience sake and to receive and return calls, it progressed to the age of text messages, then now to taking pictures, listening to music, and even checking emails and stock index for some.

Technology has progressed so much that landlines, house phones and public phones are now redundant. How many public coin or card phones do one see nowadays? Even little kids use mobile phones now! Many of my friends no longer have a house phone or landline because those are now under utilized, so their families cancel the line altogether.

Which was why I panicked when I left my phone back in the office yesterday. Wonder what could have happened? I was going to a seminar at my alma mater, and was just going to whip up my phone to check the time (makes watches unnecessary as well) when I realized it was not around.

I literally had a heart attack! If my phone is lost, all my contacts, contacts which I have built up all these years, pictures, songs, will all be gone! I was wondering how in the world was I ever going to replace everything, when I thought I could have left it in the office, since there was no where else I had gone.

So when I reached home and called my number, I was relieved to find that the phone actually rang. So it had not been stolen after all! If someone had taken the phone, he / she would have removed the SIM card immediately, and my phone would not have rung at all.

Or unless an honest person happened to find it and was waiting for me to call? But if the person was really honest, he could have just scrolled my phone book and called my mum, my brother or my home to report a lost phone. Thus I came to the conclusion that my phone was in my office after all.

I felt really lost without my phone. All these gadgets to make things convenient, I have taken for granted. How in the world did I survive not having a mobile in the past? In the past, people were able to reach me somehow by using the landline. And if we asked someone out, that person would turn up because there was no way he / she could have gotten a message across indicating he / she would be late or something cropped up.

Now, with modern technology, people tend to be late, or worse, stand you up altogether. All it took was a short message saying he would be late, or that he had something on at the last minute and could not come after all.

Granted at times there are emergencies, but seems like with modern technology and fancy gadgets, people become more irresponsible and unreliable. Their stress levels are higher, because once they send a short message or call you, they expect an answer immediately. Otherwise they will just keep calling until they reach you.

In the era of no mobile phones, people tend to be more patient. They would call your home to reach you, and if they could not reach you, so be it. They either left a message waiting for you to call back, or they would call back a while later, hoping to reach you again. With mobile phones, people get flustered once you did not pick up the phone, then they tried calling every few minutes, or rang your landline.

The thing is, if you are not answering the phone, it means something cropped up. You could be in a meeting, or you could be somewhere where phones were not allowed. To tell the truth, I will never bring my mobile out to lunch during weekdays. I do not entertain anyone during lunch hour, because I only have that time to interact with colleagues, or run errands, so I prefer not to be disturbed.

Even with a mobile, do people seriously expect you to be available to answer the call twenty four seven? I need time for myself too! My mobile may not be with me all the time! Thus, with modern technology, people seem to become worse than before – more stressed up, flustered, impatient, unreliable, irresponsible and more cowardly – because if you ask them a question they have no answer to, they totally just ignore and not reply. Sad that things have to become like this!

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