A few days back I was having a
casual post lunch talk with a group of friends, when one of the guys took out
his new smart phone and immediately another person extended his hand in with
heightened enthusiasm to check it out. And I did the unthinkable mistake at
that time of giving a sigh and passing a negative comment on Smart phones. It
was indeed not a smart thing to do. For what followed for the next fifteen
minutes was a war of words between the smart phone lovers and me; the smart
phone lovers being almost everybody else in the group. To be frank what I was
doing was actually trying to defend my statement without any logical backing to
it, while the rest actually had me by my neck and were shooting away the
usefulness of smart phones one after the other. A few of which I still remember
and they were something like this.
- If one is driving in the night and does not know the way to where one is headed to, then by using a smart phone one can navigate and find his way immediately.
- As traffic information can be found out beforehand and it can be used to choose the best route anytime.
- One can send messages for free anytime.
- One can stay in touch with his friends all the time (facebook, twitter, Gtalk etc).
- One can contact anybody anytime.
- One can read any book that is stored in the smart phone anytime.
- One can take pictures anytime.
- One can watch a movie or listen to songs anytime.
- One can play video games anytime.
- One can search the internet anytime and can get whatever information one wants.
Well there were some more such
things, but I would not put that here, because they were not specific to smart
phones. For example someone said that she could find her friends with whom she
had lost touch with through facebook. This example is more suited for
usefulness of facebook than usefulness of smartphones.
And I have to admit that these
examples are actually valid and do prove the usefulness of smartphones. There
are of course many more ways in which the smart phone comes handy. For example
when a lot of office work could get done before reaching office itself on the
go. And hence smartphones are amazing. But nothing comes at a cost; the more
amazing an experience is the costs for it also are higher. So what is that we
fail to see about this amazing piece of gadget?
What are the costs ??
The snowballing effect of Instant
gratification
What caught my attention later
was the usage of words like immediately, anytime, without waiting in almost
every usage that was mentioned about smartphones. This gadget indeed is a tool
of instant gratification. The culture of instant gratification has made people
very impatient and smartphone is the pinnacle of this culture.
Patience is a virtue as they say
and it gives strength and character to a person. It is most needed in dealing
with problems, tough situations, learning new things and above all in
relationships. Impatience helps in moving things faster. It has its own place
and context. But while it takes a lot of discipline, practice, hard work and
character to develop a little patience it takes only a smartphone and such
other things to reach the summit of impatience.
A false sense of knowledge
Two basic questions that come to
my mind is that does having all information always at your finger tips really
translate to knowledge? And secondly is all information really available?
Information when internalized and
experienced becomes knowledge. But when the information is available so quickly
people shy away from internalizing it, let alone experience it. So while people
may find information in no time using their smart phones, I suspect knowledge
will be a difficult thing to find in future.
And coming to my second question,
can everything we experience be translated into information. Can the
information be available ever be complete and objective? With internet becoming
a highly competitive space for keyword based content creation what information
we get is not merely what we are looking for, but what has been cleverly
designed and created for us to find. And then if one has to experience fresh
air and sun shine then one has to go out and experience it. This experience can
not really be translated to information. Or can it be! I wonder because I have
seen some people searching for ‘fresh air and sun shine’ on google.
Exposure to advertisement
It does not really take more than
an ant’s brain to understand how advertising affects the society. By targeted
conditioning and false trendsetting advertisements are aimed at increasing
consumerism. And more such advertisements are aimed at the young people who are
always looking for validation and acceptance. Because of ad conditioning and
trendsetting, judgments are made on what kind of clothes people wear, what phone
or car they have and not on who we really are. This leads to a certain degree
of social discrimination and emotional insecurity, especially in younger
population.
People who use smartphones are an
easy target for advertisers. And this advertising is not random at all.
Information is constantly collected from the phone about the person which are
used in targeted advertising. So it is much easier to fall prey to such
advertising as they are directed.
Addiction
If one searches for smart phone
addiction on the internet the results one gets is almost scary. More students
in developed countries are addicted to their smart phones than even alcohol or
drugs. The anxiety levels of such people shoots up when the battery is running
low or a new application can not be updated. I suggest you do your own
searching to find out more facts on this.
Short attention span
People are always doing so many
things in parallel on their smartphones. This practice does have a negative
effect on the attention span as people are not really focusing on one thing at
a time. As people get used to doing (or at least believing so though it may not
be actually happening) many things in parallel attention is always divided and
it becomes difficult then to focus, thus resulting in short attention span.
Health issues
For people who have not reached
puberty, concentrating on smart phones and playing games in that could cause
imbalance in brain development. In youth the left brain develops first followed
by right brain. Smartphones accelerate the growth of left brain and hinder the
development of right brain, thus causing imbalance.
Also due to overuse of
smartphones cases the stress and posture related problems are also going up.
Eyes, ears, neck, spine, fingers can be damaged irreparably because of overuse
of smart phones.
Workplace in future
As smart phones become more
common their usage will go up to do official work. I am afraid it will reach a
point where it will be an expectation for people to deal with office work
outside office using their smart phones. Those who will not do will be left
behind by those who comply to it. The targets of companies will become even
more unrealistic causing even more stress. The laptop and VPN has already
infringed upon social and family life of people to a great extent. Whatever is
remaining will be finished by smartphones. And by the way nobody gets paid
extra now for doing work from home outside office hours. So I don’t think
people will be paid extra when using smartphone for work becomes an unwritten
rule.
Homes in future
Because of television and
computers already the world is witnessing a decline in family conversations.
Imagine what it will be with smartphones in future. In fact its already
happening. Children are on their phones chatting to friends or watching a video
someone forwarded. The father is busy answering some business mails on his smartphone,
while mom is watching her favourite soap on her smartphone while preparing
dinner. For me this situation does not look very healthy.
Smatphones are highly loaded
gadgets with some cool features, which are very useful. But there are some
costs an individual and the society has to bear for this gadget. And it
ultimately comes down to choice, which is guided by what we value in our lives.
p.s. Some of the material here
has been directly/indirectly borrowed from various sources in the internet. I
have been able to put two sources here. I could not locate the other sources as
I had been through them long time back.
