My new BlackBerry: pondering the technologization of modern life

09Sep09

As my current cell phone contract came to an end, I decided it was time to take advantage of my carrier’s (we’ll call them Schmerizon, to avoid unpaid advertising) new-every-two plan. After much deliberation, I decided on a BlackBerry Curve (although this name is a misnomer, as the “Curve” is not really all that curvy).

And, let me tell you, this thing is complicated. Initially, all I wanted in a phone was the numbers zero through nine and a “send” button. But my new BlackBerry does far more than that, and I think that’s where the machine and I get into disagreements.

For instance, I get updates every time anything happens on Facebook, and any time I receive an email, not to mention the usual alerts for text messages (the most loathsome form of modern communication) or phone calls (few and far between, truth be told). So, if some meaningless company who’s mailing list I’ve accidentally stumbled onto emails me in the middle of the night, my phone buzzes. If Dwayne Kitzmiller comments on Harvey Epstein’s Facebook status update after me at three a.m., I’m awoken to find out about it.

Now, I know, I know there are ways to turn this stuff off, but that’s not the point I’m trying to make. Here’s the thing: I’m connected at all times to everything going on around me. I no longer have the excuse, “I was away from the office, so I just got your email today,” or “I haven’t been at the computer all day.” Now, I carry everyone I know with me at all times. Is this a good thing? My verdict is no, and I’ll explain.

Life used to be simpler, and I don’t mean to get overly nostalgic here. I vividly remember the days when you wouldn’t know if you had messages until you got home at the end of the day to check your machine. I remember when USPS mail was the preferred way to get in touch with someone in writing (I’ve always regarded the fax as being unwieldy and impractical, so we’ll skip that technological advance). How about when you graduated from high school and had to wait ten years to catch up with what everyone’s been doing? Now, (my ten-year reunion being just around the corner) we won’t have anything to talk about. Me talking to an ex-girlfriend: “So, I heard you went to the dentist last week…”  What about looking up numbers in the phone book, or going to the library to do research among the reference stacks? What about only finding out about news in the morning paper or the six p.m. local news broadcast?

My BlackBerry gives the same importance to a breaking news story, or a drastic and catastrophic change in the weather as it does to a forgotten friend commenting on what he had for lunch, and the twenty-four-hour news cycle becomes more and more congested, but also more and more personalized (and, seemingly in contrast, depersonalized).

Certainly, all of this isn’t the BlackBerry’s fault, but it’s led me to think about this stuff (in fact, as I write this, my BlackBerry has buzzed three times with genuinely unimportant updates).

On the flipside, I can listen to Pandora in my car (a far cry from the dubbed cassette tapes of my youth). I’ve only had this thing for two days, but I still don’t know how to change the ring tone, or calculate the sales price of something that’s 33% off… but I’m sure, tech-savvy as I am (or claim to be) I’ll eventually figure it out.

The jury’s still out on whether my new BlackBerry makes my hectic (post)modern life more or less hectic.

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Tags: BlackBerry, technology