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| Filled arms, empty minds |
Today, I gave up the ghost of my badly aging smartphone and
upgraded. I was well past my contract past due date, the device was losing
integrity on battery life and performance, and my work requires an effective
mobile device.
Joining me in the exercise was the CTO of my small business, AKA
my wife, a gadget enthusiast who knows tons more about these things than I do.
The agency’s shareholders (AKA my kids) were also very happy about the
purchase. To be fair, they have put up with my growing frustration over the old
device’s performance, particularly while using the mapping feature in my cab
duties for their social lives.
As for me? I had so little enthusiasm for the transaction
that the clerk at my local phone store felt moved to beg for a good survey
result. She may have also given me more than expected on the trade-in value
just because I seemed so nonplussed by the experience.
I am old enough to (a) remember when this tech was beyond
the dreams of James Bond directors, and (b) really, truly enjoy the limited
amount of time when I do not have the device on me. (Mostly during workouts and
yard work. But I digress.)
It seems incredibly ungrateful to complain about the
failures of any smartphone. Even on its worst day, the phone that I gave up
today was a marvel of technology, received information from space, and made me
more productive. If it only had continued to work as well as the day when I got
it, I would still be using it.
I’m also enough of an
environmentalist and fair trade capitalist to consider the incredibly short
lifespan of these devices to be a true scandal, and feel complicit in multiple crimes
by making a purchase, let alone being a customer.
The ambivalence goes deeper still. This is my fourth
smartphone in the past 15 years, and it is the first with a virtual keyboard,
rather than a real key QWERTY machine. Sure, I could have stuck to my guns and
kept the feature, and the amount of typos and auto-correct fails might drive me
to distraction, but you have to make too many other compromises to justify it. As
a marketer, I need to be in the mainstream.
My first smartphone was a Blackberry in a holster, with
quick-draw email speed and the expectation that the device was for work first,
with all that implies in terms of time off meaning time away. The fact that
these are now so ubiquitous, with the majority of Web traffic coming on the
platform (admit it, you are reading this on one, aren’t you?) Does not fill me
with joy.
But when I dig down deep enough, what’s the real objection?
It is one thing to know, intellectually, that the world is
moving away from text to images. That ship sailed in the monochrome monitor
age.
It is quite another point to get a reminder of that, emotionally,
every time I look at the screen. A screen that I will look at more than any
other, over the lifespan of the device.
And finally, something else entirely to know that as an
advertising and marketing pro, I can either learn to love this screen, or fail
to keep pace with the prime demographic that most of my clients want to reach.
No one ever said progress was easy, right?
* * * * * *
Speaking
of reaching a moving target, I would like to ask you to like or share this
column, connect with me on LinkedIn, email me at davidlmountain
at gmail dot com, or visit my agency’s site.
We offer copywriting, direction and strategy, along with design, illustration,
photography, coding and hosting. The RFPs are always free. Hope to hear from
you soon.
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