My Big Brother Smart Phone. There are times in my life when I am stunned to near-death experience. No, no I am not talking about the indomitable Sehwag finishing his triple century with a six. One can manage to absorb the shock, stand and applaud the masters of the trade.
It is my new smart phone, guys!
I remember my grand mother taking complete control of my life as a little kid, growing up in a small family, ordering me what to do, what not to do, what to eat, when to do homework, when to join my friends for an outdoor game.
Did I rebel, ever? No? You see she never allowed anyone else in the family to interfere with her way of nurturing good habits to make me a ‘good boy’.
Well, if she lived through another 65 years that I grew up to become a liberated soul she would have found a competitor. Yes, in the form of my new smart phone!
The small size of the mobile phone compared to the diminutive frame of my grand mother should not matter. It is really smart, you know. It works when I am sleeping – that’s ok but it works when it is sleeping as well.
It faithfully notes and records what I am doing every day, every night, when I get up, when I go to bed, when I eat, when I brush my teeth, when I take my afternoon nap. It keeps track of all my browsing, what I buy from Amazon, how much I pay.
So far so good, guys.
The scary part is when its freaky grandmotherly controlling instincts take over.
Today, as soon as I got up from the bed in the morning it posed a question “ Did you check the weather in Navsari?”
Yes I do check the weather every day in the morning but missing it by 5 minutes? The smart phone won’t let me miss my daily dose of weather.
Then after half an hour it boldly asked, “Turn the stop watch on for 10 minutes?”
I am aghast! Yes, I set the stopwatch for 10 minutes on the smart phone around this time and plunge into meditation, setting the stopwatch so that I do not slip into a permanent Samadhi of sorts. After 10 minutes the smart phone screams ‘enough, enough’. I cannot afford to slip into a permanent Samadhi!
So I am now scared. I cannot afford to applaud this feat of the tiny devil. Pretty soon, the smart phone would dictate my daily life; no options offered such as “would you rather brush teeth later? Or how about a visit to the toilet!
I have read reports of young boys and girls getting addicted to some app that leads them to their death. I don’t even want to know the name of such apps.
Guys wake up before you get hooked to your smart phone. Freedom is dead. Long live the Smart Phone!
Agree! We didn’t want to be slaves, fought for freedom. Now we willingly offer ourselves for enslavement 😞 and don’t even realise it!
The smartphone is here to stay or it may be upstaged by some new technological marvel that will threaten to snatch all our freedom. The superhero techies of India please wake up and find a way to steer clear of such marvels without sacrificing the convenience that they offer!
Thanks, Nayayan Koudinya for liking this post