iObject to upgrading

iObject to upgrading

Sydney Morning Herald

Thursday February 4, 2010

julietta jameson

I qwerty therefore I am. The unconnected life is not worth living. If an iPhone rings in the forest and no one is there to pick up, does it make a sound?With due respect to Descartes, Socrates and whoever said that tree in the forest thing, well ... love me, love my gadgets.I went into a complete existential crisis when two things happened in quick succession.I dropped my camera. Actually, I didn't just drop it. I pulled a cardie out of my bag and my camera was kind of flung out as I shook the cardie free.Then the new iPhone was launched. Just like that, out it comes, all la-de-dah and thinking itself special. This has ruined everything, not because I want one but because I don't.I have defined myself by my smugness about this gadget, Napoleonic in its quest to conquer the world.I thought its billion "apps" meaningless complications to a life already confusing enough.No, I don't have an iPhone, I would say with an air of superiority. Everyone knows you shouldn't buy the first generation of a Mac product until they've ironed out the kinks.I read that somewhere. It's never stopped me before but it sounds like a perfect excuse for not having one."But," say the iPhone lovers, "it's second generation."Whatever. I'm talking over them about how annoying that Balinese glockenspiel ringtone is.Now the iPhone is third generation, I can't use my excuse. I'll look like an ill-informed troglodyte. And troglodyte I am happy to be. There's an old-fashioned charm in that. Ill-informed, not so much. The line between being quaint and irrelevant is a thin one.Have you noticed how our relationship to our gadgets now defines us? How you can tell so much about a person from the gear they carry around?My thing has been threefold: my little silver iPod, my Nikon Coolpix P80 and my lovely white MacBook.I have a phone, of course, but it is neither here nor there. It's a Nokia and I like it for phone calls and SMS.So there. How marvellously restrained of me.The point of my collection of gadgets is to say: I'm down with the technology, I choose superior functionality but my life is not ruled by connectivity.Unlike, say, my friend Craig who just has to have the latest everything and is proud of it. Or my sister, who would die if she turned off her BlackBerry. Or a certain lady I know who is powerful in publishing and has a love of snail mail and thinks Facebook is the devil.You can tell everything you need to know about these people from their relationship to their gadgets.I now have a serious problem, however. My camera is dead. I need a new one. My iPod is nearly two years old and my job is requiring more email access on the go.That iPhone is looking like an obvious solution.It means, however, that I will need to develop a whole new schtick.I am thinking something along the lines of: "Yes, I waited until the third generation to have the kinks ironed out. I know it can fly to the moon but I only use it for phone calling, SMS, photos, music, GPS capabilities, video conferencing, email and that cool new digital compass thing."Which is like the shoe of my childhood that had a compass in the heel, so still kind of old-school. Maybe I can even learn to love that glockenspiel ringtone.