Freedom = Laziness + Technology Designed to Become Obsolete
At least in my case recently. My phone did the Apple version of bluescreen, which was a silent little picture of a usb jack (obviously as the opposite end of the phone's charging cable) on the bottom, then a little arrow in the middle pointing away from the jack and towards the emblem of iTunes.
Dang it!
So I installed iTunes on my computer knowing exactly where this was going. Yeah, it installed, but then it couldn't find my files related to it because months, MONTHS ago, my hard drive crashed and I've been delaying this day ever since. Saw it coming, couldn't do anything about it. With no backup ready, iTunes was going to wipe my phone clean with a reinstall of the operating system. There goes everything.
Could this have been avoided? Heck yes maybe! Sure, I could've made an appointment (gag) with the nearby Apple store to have a Genius save my life (thank you Jesu- I mean - Genius!). Passed on that. Passed on internet, uh, research (still can't say that with a straight face) to find out if there was anything I could do to bypass the deathgrip iTunes has on it's relationship with my phone. Passed on any sensible steps to manually save the information on my phone (spreadsheets!). My laziness was so thorough, I didn't even try to transfer my contacts, etc. to my SIM card! I mean, yeesh, any forensics lab would tell you that this guy just didn't care about backing his phone up.
And I didn't. These last few days, I've been having fun trying to figure out who's texting me with the clues they send me. I'm batting 1000 so far, no mean feat. I'm answering every phone call, to which I am no longer accustomed:
"Hello?"
"Hey."
"Uh, hey."
"Sup?"
"Is this Jesus?"
So yeah, the contacts are gone, the history is gone, the calendar is gone, but all those things need to be rebuilt every once in a great while anyway, right? (this is what I call "defeat accommodation" ) There were contacts on that phone, many many contacts, that I could not even begin to guess why. All that history? Oh, that's what I texted to that one girl I stopped dating two years ago? Awesome. Good to know. The loss of the calendar is kinda a pain, if only because I have to somehow figure out birthdays and anniversaries... Wait! Finally! A use for facebook!
Technology changes what is required of us. For the most part, I'd like to think for the better. I'm of the generation, perhaps the generation on the cusp, that had to memorize phone numbers as a prerequisite to being social. I'm not proud of the fact, or for whatever reason yearn for a return to those "simpler" times. I'm just saying that right now I could rattle off several of my friends' phone numbers back in junior high without having any idea how to contact someone I've been good friends with for the last five years.
Is that progress? Yes! Does it make sense? No! I don't know how to call my sister right now. How's that for hobbled? But then again, should progress make sense?
Once Google's self-driving cars go mainstream, combined with Google Maps and GPS... you know, we might live to see the day where we don't actually remember how to get to the grocery store that's just a half mile away that we go to twice a week, just like how we don't remember phone numbers any more. So take your experience with your phone and extrapolate on that - your car's software crashes and all the sudden you don't know how to get home and you don't know where you are and you don't know how to get to work the next day... technology is great, but man, it's a pain when it breaks on you.
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