The smartphone dictatorship

The smartphone dictatorship

You name it, your smartphone can do it.  Surf the web – check, start your car – check, control an aerial UAV – check, act as a remote control for almost everything electronic inside your house – check, really boring staff (e.g. phone calls, SMS and uhmm other boring staff) – check, workout your abs – check, take stills and videos and instantly upload them to social networks – check, communicate with your shoes – check, play 3D games – check, make coffee – check, verify that your "significant other half" is cheating – check, measure your "bedroom performance" – check, analyse urine samples on the go – check.  This list can go on and on and on but I am typing on my smartphone right now and I will try to keep it short, because thumb typing on the tiny on screen keyboard is not very convenient (I bet you knew that already, but I had to stress it out).

I for once rarely ever turned my PC on, while my tablet too was gathering dust most of the time. Why is that?

Because I could do almost everything I would normally (before the super smartphone era) do with my PC/laptop/netbook/tablet with just one small, lustworthy device that I am condemned (and blessed) to always carry with me. So is there a problem with that?

You bet there is. Face it people. Smartphones can do many many things, but if you want a decent camera you still have to go get an SLR. If you want to browse the web, of course you can do it on an iPhone, but still a 10 inch tablet screen or even better a 23 inch IPS desktop panel will provide a vastly better experience.

Okay, you can sit on the couch and try to do everything with your smartphone. I have been doing this for a while, until my tech illiterate father asked me the million dollar question: “Son, why don’t you turn your computer on anymore; Can’t it do what your cell phone does?”

Thank you dad. For pointing out the obvious.

Well, dad is not actually suggesting that you ditch your smartphone and go get yourself the 14 or so devices that you can substitute with it.  What he is saying is, since you may already happen to own (or have access to) a laptop, a tablet, a netbook and a games console and since you cannot possibly be on the road ALL the time, just do yourself a big favour and use these instead, at least when you are at home.

To sum up, no one can deny that the smartphone has changed our lives for the better. But more and more people seem to only use their smartphone instead of other (more capable and suitable) devices, even when at home. We ended up making our lives more difficult, even miserable sometimes. Do we want this? Do we have to keep doing this? No and no.

To paraphrase the great Martin Luther King Jr., I have a dream that one day we will manage to deny the convergence utopia, where one device does it all and everyone is happy with that. I have a dream that one day we will be able to send the new dictator – the smartphone – back to where it belongs and that is not home.

(Still, I started typing this post on my iPhone.  But when I came home I switched to my MacBook.  And it was way better.  Try it out and see for yourselves.)