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Thursday 16 December 2010

A Life Without Apps

It's a horrible noise, isn't it. You know, the noise of your iPhone hitting the bottom of the toilet. And it's an ugly picture too. isn't it. That one of you watching it tumble out of your pocket and straight down the pan knowing there's absolutely nothing you can do but watch it sink. And being an iPhone, knowing damn well that's the end of it's life.

You'd have thought it was the end of mine too. I was panic stricken. Short of breath. Feeling dizzy. I grabbed it as quick as I could but no amount of falling to my knees shouting 'don't die, don't die!' was going to save it. I watched it flicker as the life (and the wee) drained out of it. Gone. Dead. And it was all my fault. I had no-one else to blame. And that hurt too!

What hurt even more was the realisation of how much I relied on the damn thing. Checking emails, what's on TV, what's on at the flicks, the weather, the traffic, Facebook at any time I cared to, Twitter, Ping, Bing - you name it, it was there at my finger tips. And the games! Oh the games! Those precious minutes of down time where I could play mindlessly on Doodlejump, or Coin Dozer. Ye gods! Coin Dozer! I had over 5000 coins!! Took me months!

I don't know when my period's due, what the football scores are, whether the Central Line's down (probably is), whether I've won the lottery (probably not) and I can't jump on Wikipedia to resolve an argument that's about to kick off.

But the worse thing of all is being without googlemaps! As was demonstrated very clearly last weekend when I found myself in the middle of nowhere armed only with an Atlas (a dusty, usually out-of-date road map of the UK for those of you unfamiliar with the term. It didn't even have the M25 on it. Most of it still showed farmland and areas recently conquered by Vikings. So goodness knows how I was expected to find a small Essex village. I couldn't even work out where I'd been, let alone where I was going. It was more luck than judgement. Still at least I had an Alcatel mobile phone c.1982 to make a phone call (phone call - oh how retro!) for the hosts to talk me down.

However, this 3 week exercise in being minus smartphone has had it's advantages. I actually got a few things done. I read a book. Did a crossword. I wrote lists - and subsequently regained the power of handwriting. And more importantly, I actually had a few conversations with people I'd normally Skype, Ping or Facebook.

So maybe it wasn't the worse thing in the world after all. Although the temporary loss of numbers was a bit of an arse. And the £50 excess. But it has made me think about relying so ridculously heavily on a piece of technology.

Everything in moderation, huh! Must dash though. I've got some Angry Birds that need dealing with!