Craving for that next cell phone hit

Zack Whittaker has taken a few days off to “get his head together”, and scheduled this post to be releasedin his absence.

I'd like to tell you about a conversation I had with my friend recently; this was seconds after she had lost her purse on a night out. I remember saying to her, "well at least it wasn't you're phone you've lost." I suggested that not only would she have to replace the handset which would be a pain in itself, with or without insurance, but that she'd also have to go through the whole re-entering of phone numbers back into the system, getting all of the applications re-installed, let alone all the settings of the handset back to her desired arrangement.

Even with all this, the more traumatic experience of the loss of valuable pictures and messages that may never be seen again, would also have to be dealt with a good cry.

I wasn't trying to belittle the loss of her purse, I've had my wallet stolen before in Scunthorpe (shudder), and that naturally really hacked me off. But if I lost my phone, I think I'd have a minor breakdown; I know many other people who would too.

This made me consider the dependency I personally have upon the technology which surrounds me. Not only when I find myself without it suddenly, but also if it fails on me in the middle of something. The issue I have is that the devices I use all of the time tend to be, what I call "consolidation devices", devices which have consolidated an array of technologies into a single box.

Technology is at such a level at present that it allows a single device to incorporate an abundance of uses quite easily. Cell phones can also be MP3 players, cameras, web browsers, photo albums, and memory boxes (in terms of logged discourse in the form of text messages), not just devices which allow us to simply communicate in one way or another.

These are no longer advertised according to their speaking/hearing qualities, but mainly for all the other technological attributes they possess. Let's face it, if a phone doesn't have a MP3 player, decent camera, or a half-decent amount of memory, we as student consumers will rarely even consider it.

The dependency on a device lies in what it can do for us and if it serves many purposes, then surely without it we are a little in the dark. Phones now are the starting point at which we now organise our meetings, look up our lecture times, discuss our group presentations or even just sit down and have a chat at the end of a day.

I don't know about any one else, but I think I'd be rather be without mine...