Grandpa Phone

Since being shown the ad for the new Windows phone in class I have seen it on just about every commercial break I have viewed from most of the shows I enjoy watching. To be honest, it’s a good ad. Everyone can relate to watching people fall into each other while texting on their cutting edge, 3G capable, app endowed, sleek, sexy, exciting phone. (coughcoughiPhonecough)

The Widows phone is for people who don’t want too many of the aforementioned frills. The point of the ad is to show that the phone gets the user in and out of the interface with out any dawdling. It enables the user to do what they have to do and get on with their date in a fancy restaurant or back to the open heart surgery they have taken two minutes out of to check the score of the Boston game.

(Because I know that happens to me every time I perform open-heart surgery.)

Something this phone reminds me of is the gradpa phone. \/


It’s a phone for people who don’t even really want a phone; only the Widnows phone seems to be a smart phone for people who don’t really want a smart phone. Which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. It’s for that 50/60/70/perhaps even 80 or 90 year old who throws their hands up at new technologies, but at the same time realizes they need them.

I’m not sure what this means for the smart phone market, they have become the latest and greatest thing to carry around. However, they bring with them lifestyle implications. One who owns an iPhone becomes a hipster and one who owns a windows phone becomes a grandpa. I’m not sure if there’s a better or worse in this scenario. It seems to me that the only way to really come out on top is to not let your phone dictate who you are.

Laptop Party

I am sitting in a room with seven people. But I am completely alone.

It's a paradox, but it's true.

How? We're all on respective laptops. Two on facebook, one playing a sandbox game called Minecraft, two playing Doom II on a British server, one reading a blog, and one writing a blog; a scene that Postman and Keen would surely shake their heads at.

Ever since I started writing in this blog I have gained certain sensitivity to this scene. It’s something my friends and I have been doing since we came to college, gathering in our common room to do what we will on our computers. This year has been an especially popular year for the “laptop party” because of the addition of WiFi to our dorms.

I find this scene particularly interesting because it happens for various occasions. There is the music sharing laptop party, the facebook laptop party, the general laptop party, and the ever-elusive study laptop party (which never goes according to plan). It’s just how we do things now.

I’ve come to value the time I spend with my friends without the distraction of Facebook or the allure of Stumble Upon sitting in their lap. Every time I look up to find the glow of a computer screen upon my friend’s face, fears of total media saturation come to mind. A generation swallowed into the virtual world, like so many cheesy 90’s movies.

My only hope is that people continue to value time spent away from their various devices more than the time they spend on Facebook.