Comes this story from the Ukraine that I just couldn’t pass up: “Croc gulps phone, starts ringing.” That’s how the headline read. A woman taking a photo with her cell phone at a zoo leaned over the crocodile pen — always a wise thing to do, lean over a crocodile pen! — and dropped it. Mistaking it for a dead chicken, and not realizing he would have to assume the 2-year cell phone contract with additional data and text charges, the croc swallowed it.
Zookeepers didn’t believe the woman’s story until the croc started ringing, and checking his stocks, and tweeting that the zoo food made a wombat puke purple for a week.
Worse still, the poor croc isn’t eating anymore. His handlers say he’s lethargic and listless. Sits around in his pajamas all day checking e-mail and playing with phone apps of talking cats.
Like millions of cell phone junkies, he’s hooked on his new phone.
I have a new phone myself and I’m starting to feel a bit like that poor Ukranian croc (who is actually African, but likes to winter in the Ukraine because there’s less pollen). Gone is my old phone which, strangely enough, pretty much did only one thing: made phone calls. Here is my new phone which, strangely enough, pretty much can do everything BUT make phone calls. In fact, I’ve had it a couple weeks and still haven’t made one.
I have, however, learned that it can create a WIFI hotspot, allowing me to open up my own Starbucks so people can come check their e-mail for free. That at all hours of the night it will alert me to what I don’t want to know — like how thousands of e-mails are waiting for the morning to digitally digest me. (The beeping sounds like a storm of electronic raindrops falling on my roof. Or machinegun fire!)
And it can finally let me walk along like the rest of the distracted masses, my head buried in the phone, right up until I step into an open manhole. Luckily, I can now quickly post to Facebook: “Help. LOL. Fell in sewer. More smelly than on TV. Here’s photo of broken leg with bone protruding. See everyone Saturday night. ; )”
Actually, there are only two things I really like about it — the map and weather apps. Oh, and I loaded the U.S. Army Survival Field Guide. You never know while walking to work when you might need to build a shelter or fight off a charging boar. (Don’t worry, I’m not using it in the car. I promised my wife … and Oprah.)
But otherwise, I wouldn’t say I’m all that impressed with the new “phone.” No, that’s not it. I AM impressed by what it can do, but not all that entranced or in love with what it’s turning me into. More than anything, I resent it and how it tethers me to the digital world — disconnecting me from the real one.
I’m starting to hate having that much power, that much access to information, that much communication connection, all in the palm of my hands.
No wonder the Ukranian croc doesn’t feel so well anymore. Long gone are the days of sitting there staring at the trees, enjoying the sub-zero Ukranian summer breezes or, you know, mauling the occasional mammal who wanders into the wrong pen.
No, now it’s checking e-mail all the time.
At a restaurant recently I watched a family of four barely say a word to each other. Each was so busy on their phones — checking mail, playing videogames, maybe even texting back and forth, “R U getting shrimp, because I want 1?” “Can we order an app?” takes on a whole new meaning.
And I found it quite sad. That we turn to technology and away from our own loved ones. That these new inventions — stunning and wonderful as they might be — have disconnected us from those around us … even ourselves.
But I’ve pledged not to let this happen to me. I found a little button on my mine that does something rather amazing: It takes away the smartphone’s smartness. It turns it into — gasp! — just a phone. Not forever, but at least for a while. No Internet, no data streams, no e-mails or fancy, funky alerts. While it’s clicked, people can call in and I can call out. Just like my old crappy cell phone, which I’ve really started to miss. More and more I’m realizing it’s the coolest, most high tech, most revolutionary feature on my new cutting-edge phone.
And more and more I’m realizing why that crocodile in the Ukraine is so sad. Maybe I’ll text him about the button.