The most important invention in your lifetime is…
The handheld mobile phone technology. Definitely in my lifetime. It wasn’t supposed to get as crazy as it has today. I remember getting one. If memory serves me right, I got the Sony Ericsson T100 first. It was a tiny petite device.
What an amazing device that was, however the aspirational device at that time used to be the Nokia 6600. Which I eventually got, and clicked photos on . Then I moved onto the Samsung, eventually back to Nokia – the music one 5600, which my son decided to clean and loaded into the washing machine with a few clothes and some vessels! The phone stopped working, I lost the storage. But the SIM worked! Then after a lot of discussion, eventually at some point I even got a hand-me-down Apple device. And from then, I’ve always had one apple and one Samsung device. Apple for everything and Samsung for ease of use. I use both for different things and I can say that they are both useful devices.
In the good old days, mobile phones were a class distinction, only citizens above a particular pay grade had one. And at that point in time I remember having discussions saying, even the maid is going to get one. And I was told, it’s not a possibility as affordability was going to be a deciding factor. Specially in India where mobile plans from telecom providers was high & inaccessible. And then came the Jio plans, that redefined affordability. They made plans and mobile technology accessible to all, and even created a market for cheaper handsets in all brands for everyone.
Today my driver and maid in India have a minimum of three handsets, depending on the side hustles they are doing. One is a basic handset, used only for audio calls, one is a smart phone, touch screen and 5G enabled, to use as a screen to watch and for entertainment. The third is actually a personal device for video calls and fb updates. I don’t update my fb as often as they do. I don’t even use my device for entertainment. I have two devices as I have way too many apps to help enable this crazy entitled lifestyle I lead.
But yea, mobile phones, you have to love the entire, ‘connecting you, to the world’ concept. Technology and everything it brings, in terms of value to our lives, is this everything we wanted or have we lost the plot somewhere? We are so engrossed at looking at the screen and having conversations that when the screen is removed, we stare blankly at the world, at the physicality of moving the jaw and not the fingers to have a real conversation. At a loss because a long press does not bring up the option to look for synonyms or dictionaries that will replace a mundane word for something sounding exotic and pseudo-intellectual! Is it really the invention of the last couple of decades ? Is it worth all the chaos it has unleashed on us? On the next generation, the one born with the handset attached to their palm? I am wondering what the invention of this decade is going to be? The one starting in 2020- with COVID and that ends in 2030! What next?!
Just a little more 