Smart phones

They are ubiquitous. Tourists walk and talk on the sidewalk with them; couples on a date each finger a smartphone, a whole day addiction. 

The cellular smart phone is able to function like a computer, typically with an operating system that can run general-purpose applications with a relatively discernable screen. It combines all kinds of digitized functions—telephone, iChat, calendar, alarm clock, including the indispensible email. “Smartphone” has since become a dictionary word as well.

Accounts on the widespread use of the gizmo in all regions are similar. Smartphones are popularly used as if G.I. Joe got the rest of the world chewing gum again.

I took a group to Mt. Tapuchao on an overcast afternoon that softly looked on all sides of the island like the legendary Bali Hai of the Pacific on a misty morn, and when I looked at my wards to see if they were mesmerized by the ambience as I was, all three were on their smartphones. No one paid attention to the surrounding scenery!

One thing is for sure, the smartphone is not an item anticipated by sci-fi that projected life into the future, a bane for prophets and prognosticators. It is one of those gizmos where function just merged with fashion and fad, and the manufacturers and sellers laughed their way to the bank.

The smartphone is here to stay, its designs dominating jewelry and designers’ display. I am still stuck with the laptop even as my iPad collects dust on my desktop. If the rest of the world converses in a smartphone, I lounge even in the Anthropocene era with dinosaurs!

It is now statistically confirmed, with a new word coined to fit the phenomenon called “phubbing,” that feeling ignored by a loved one oblivious that ze has displaced attention toward a beloved with an obsession with the use of a device, a dildo of the imagination. Phubbing “snub” causes talk breakdowns and relationship breakups, interferes with smooth vibes.

As a wordsmith, I see the appropriateness of the “smart” phone as used by enamored folks. The phone itself is nothing but a glorified computer, captivating users. That we call the phone “smart” is appropriate to the degree that it is used by “dumb” folks who allow a phone to be “master” over itchy fingers incapable of letting it just be.

The practice of turning an object into an obsession is called idolatry. The smartphone was meant as a communication tool but the tool has taken over living. That is not unusual. It used to be money that was the object of obsession where human worth is measured by the size of the bank account. Much earlier, Iesu of Nazareth ascended the zenith of medieval supernatural architecture.

The “el” of elohim (later translated as “lord”) is “is-ness”, an affirmation of simply “the way life is” (YHWH). The Hebrew was clear of its tangible function to create and destroy. Muslims took the other end of the spectrum when the Hebrews slipped to idolize the Temple of Jerusalem and the City of David. They shifted the function to a role, declared “al lah” as the “no thing.” discouraging the use of icons and images in piety. The prophetic role of the messenger to prophesy boom or gloom became the major focus.

The role is the new obsession as democratized horizontal structures long for the status symbol of royals.

There is an escapist quality to the obsession with icons as minds are transported to imagined zones; the smartphone allows conversation instantly with imagined others like in social media. The smartphone is even capable of transmitting instant images through iChat. Never mind the nature or quality of the immediate surroundings. Immediacy is in the phone and what it creates, not the broader world of awareness; immediacy is a province of titillated minds oblivious to place and time.

Some religious types descended on my apartment one weekend to assure me that there is life after death on authority of scriptures quoted in their tracts. The Scriptures became their icon, a source of authority. Karl Marx observed that religion becomes an opiate of the people. The smartphone gets our minds to locate life elsewhere other than our immediate surrounding, and around me, it has clearly become an opiate of the people. 

A Chinese saying goes: It is not our feet that move us along; it is our minds. The mind is not just about “thinking.” It moves from sensations to emotions, cognition to action, simple but helpful. There is a gray but much utilized area between preferences (emotions) and thoughts (cognition), referred to as “belief,” a mirror of one’s state of being littered with images rather than a db of knowledge. 

The Japanese took their word for picture, moji, and attached “e” to make it electronic. The “emoji” face graces many emails; is the Oxford English Dictionary word of the year!

The complex smartphones manual makes me want to return to school but its ability to snap a picture can very well be its saving grace. We may not become literate, but we sure can reclaim visual skills.