A Necessary Evil?

August 2019

It’s the middle of summer and life is good.  For me anyway.  I have a new job, and I am genuinely enjoying it.  I’m learning a great deal.  Even at the ripe old age of 56.  I travel too much but it’s generally to the same place, and that is Denver, CO, a locality I am still happily exploring.  My wife joined me on a recent trip. We surveyed Denver, Boulder, and Rocky Mountain National Park.  We drove all the way to Steamboat, and we got to see it in the summer. It was glorious!

We were in the car a great deal on this trip.  Yes, we would stop and look at stuff, frequently hiking to a scenic lookout for a glimpse of some amazing vista.  But generally, we were in the car driving and observing.  We were spoiled by all the choices.  There is so much to see and do in this part of Colorado. 

So, we were constantly wondering things like: Which way should we go? What’s the name of that mountain? What is that? I wonder who that river is named after? How far is our hotel? Where should we go for dinner?  And we always had the answers to these questions in the palm of our hands.  The mighty cell phone.  On this adventure I realized our newfound dependance on this technology, which made me ponder how much this little gadget has integrated into our lives.

Firstly, what would we do without them?  In fact, what did we do before them?  It’s hard to remember.  Cell phones have changed everything in just the last decade or so. As we drove around Colorado, my wife was on her phone a great deal.  Not talking to anyone or texting.  At least not too much.  But looking up things that we were seeing.  She had an entire set of encyclopedias in her hand as we drove around.  She was continually regaling me with information about what we were passing and seeing. 

“There are the Flatirons. They were named by early settlers after their unique shape”. 

Then she would continue… “The Flatirons were formed by geological events over millions of years. Initially, a thick pile of sand and gravel was deposited, forming the Fountain Formation. This formation was later uplifted and tilted during the Laramide Orogeny, which occurred between 80 and 35 million years ago.”  Maybe a little TMI but I enjoyed her infomercials. She does this almost continuously as we tour about.  So, with almost everything we passed that was interesting, and sometimes not, she would regale me with colorful info.  Her phone being her link to endless knowledge and information.  Frankly, it made her a wonderful tour guide.

My cell phone was our navigator.  I’d just tell her where we wanted to go, and she would provide the turn-by-turn directions that we are all now so accustomed to. Even if we take a walk. Once when we got out in the middle of nowhere and our phones stopped receiving a signal we were “lost”, and frankly, a little anxious.  When we finely got a signal back, and our autopilot, we both had texts and messages waiting for us.  You’re never really off the grid.  It’s amazing the power these little devices have.

Mine also tells me how many steps I have taken and reminds me when I have taken too few or sat for too long. It listens to the topics my wife and I discuss and tailors my feeds to bring me information on those things.  Facebook was epic at giving me material regarding The Flatirons. You already know about the thorough discussion we had about those rock formations.  Facebook knew too.  Which is just a little scary!  No, it’s very scary!! I could go on and on about social media but let’s leave that for another time.

Back to our cell phones. Don’t you think that texting is making us forget how to talk to one another? You know, have a conversation.  If you ever got stuck in an elevator with a stranger, you’d have no idea how to talk to them, or they to you.  You may have to text them just to communicate. No one seems to know how to just have a mindless chat anymore.  Or even a mindful one for that matter. But small talk is a dying medium for passing the time.

There are many people, mostly young people, if I may stereotype, that treat attempted small talk as if they are being personally assaulted.  Dialogues are just way outside of their comfort zones.  And if you want to end a conversation, all you need to do is pull out your cell phone and act like you just got an urgent text or email that you must respond to. I truly believe that cell phones have made strangers even “stranger”.  They have helped create a chasm within humanity.

For example, I walked up to a young person at a scenic overlook. We nodded acknowledgment to one another.  He was looking at his phone of course.  It was just him and I, as my wife was lagging on the trail behind me.  I politely made a quick, social statement, and you would have thought I initiated a clap of thunder. All I said was, “Wow, that’s some kind of view!” and the dude nearly jumped off the ledge.  His reply was a nervous laugh, and he wandered off. Likely to monitor TikTok and post his close encounter with a socially functional human being. It was a little shocking to me.  But frankly it is not uncommon.

Also, because most cell phones now days are better cameras than cameras everybody takes tons of pictures.  Including me. I can’t tell you how many “selfies” I witnessed or just the sheer number of people with their phones out taking a picture of a couple of Elk out in a field a mile away.  I wondered if the people snapping away at these shots and immediately posting them on social media, ever actually looked around to really see the beauty of what they were photographing.  Oh well, it’s probably better nowadays to make sure you let everybody know what you’re seeing and doing, versus actually seeing and doing it.

Yet, what would we do without these little technological marvels?  To call them a “phone” is a bit of a misleading term.  They are so much more than that.  I always knew the direction we were headed, our elevation, what constellations were in the night sky, what flight that was on the aircraft at 35,000 feet over our heads, as well as having the ability to identify the birds, plants and mushrooms that we encountered.  Not to mention finding the nearest McDonalds. And this is only a fraction of the functions even I, a technological novice, used on this one little trip.  Like I said, what did we do before we had these little companions?  The funny thing is, we did just fine.

Regardless of whether you are young or old, they are integrated into the fabric of our lives. They are a necessary evil, even if they are likely to bring verbal communication to a standstill.  We must face the fact that they are never going away.  They will always be there giving us information we don’t need.  As long as we have a clear signal.  But my wife’s cell phone did let us know about a casino in the middle of nowhere in the Colorado mountains.  It cost me $300 for that piece of knowledge. Maybe some day our phones will give us self-control too?  I’ll start looking for that app.