The indispensable smartphone

Remember the last flip phone you owned? Not a smartphone by any means, it was pretty dumb. You probably only used it for actually talking to people. Now you've got a super smartphone, and if you are like most owners it has become darn near indispensable.

Back in the day of the feature phone, you probably forgot it at least once when you headed out for your day. There was a sense of panic when you realized it was back home as you were cut off from the people in your life. Of course the day progressed just fine, and in the end not having the phone was just another minor event in your day.

The smartphone has become such a major part of the lives of many of us. It has become so important that inadvertently leaving the phone at home would be a catastrophe. I know folks who have turned around to go back home to retrieve a forgotten smartphone, even when being late had dire consequences.

Doing without the smartphone for a whole day is unthinkable for many of us. The phone now keeps us connected to far more than our phone buddies. Today's smartphone connects us to our family, friends, social networks, breaking news, current events, and the entire Internet.

Without the smartphone we wouldn't know about news the instant it breaks. We'd miss our friends' status updates in real-time. We wouldn't be able to look up any fact on a need to know basis. We wouldn't know what the weather has in store. It would be lot of trouble to find out where that new restaurant is located at lunch-time. We definitely wouldn't be able to find it on a map and then get directed to it.

Worst of all we wouldn't be able to fling disgruntled avians at envious swine.

A day without the smartphone wouldn't be the end of the world, but we'd be totally in the dark. We would be cut off from our world, a world we are more aware of than ever before.

The smartphone has become indispensable to us in our daily lives. Even though I'll bet many of us speak with others far less using the smartphone than we did with the old feature phone, we are far more connected with others than we have been in the past.

We could live without our smartphone, for a short time anyway, without dire consequences. But it would be a very unpleasant experience, and one we would go to great lengths to avoid. The smartphone has become an integral part of our lives, and we are better off for it.

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