On life without a telephone

If you read my last couple of posts, you will know that I am currently without a working mobile telephone.  It could be two weeks before mine is repaired and unless the battery on the old phone I keep for emergencies suddenly comes to life, or someone is kind enough to lend me an O2 compatible handset then I am going to have to get used to it.

In some ways I am actually looking forward to it and view it as a sort of social experiment.*  Ironically enough, I have just had a week without my phone because I decided it would do me good to leave it in ‘Offline Mode’ whilst I was on holiday.  This was surprisingly easy when I was out of the country without much of a care in the world, but back in the real world things could be a bit more difficult. Especially since I now know that some texts sent to me whilst I was away never got delivered.  I know that if someone really wants to get hold of me they will find another way, but it has created a bit of a nagging feeling that I might miss something.**

Of course, some say that we always used to manage without mobiles so it should be quite easy.  But now we have a culture where it’s not unusual to say “I’ll give you a buzz when I’m in town at about 10ish” rather than “I’ll meet you for coffee in Starbucks at 10.”  Or “I’ll text you later when I know where I’m going to be.”  Making plans in advance seems to be quite retro these days, and even in the last 24h I’ve felt like a burden pushing for definite arrangements ahead of time.  Mind you, the fact that I can no longer rely on my phone to inform someone I am running a few minutes late has got to be good for my punctuality…

Anyway I’ll let you know how I get on now that this inadvertent experiment is underway.  Watch this space.

 

*if I was a journalist I’d get paid for this. Donations gratefully received.

**I should probably just get over myself.

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

the purpose of religion

One of the things which featured in the recent debate on this post is the idea that “religion should be about improving oneself”. This has got me thinking; ‘religion’ of course takes many forms, but in the vast majority of cases I disagree with this. To paraphrase MarkC, religion is certainly something which as a by-product might help with “improving oneself”, but however you measure self-improvement it is not the sole point, certainly not in the Judeo-Christian case. In fact, if your sole aim is to “improve yourself”, why waste your time playing around with the trappings of religion? Most religions are based around the idea of faith in God, and that, surely, is the point. Considering Christianity specifically, Jesus said “ Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself ” and so ‘religion’ should not be in danger of becoming all about wo...
Read more

atheism is a matter of faith, not science: the debate continues

Following the letters page in last Wednesday's Metro and the follow-up comment on this post I’m pleased to see that the beginnings of a debate are brewing, and I intend to use this post to pick up the baton again. Unsurprisingly, I’m going to start by responding to the aforementioned comment. I apologise if my tone was deemed to be a bit sharp, but I have no hesitation in defending the point I was trying to make. According to dictionary.com , faith can be defined as “belief that is not based on proof.” As there is no proof that God does not exist, belief that God does not exist (i.e. atheism) must be faith. Now, I take your point that “as human beings we are always revising and fine tuning what we hold to be true based on the evidence to hand, what we discover and our ability to determine what is probable or improbable.” To digress slightly, that is why switching on the Large Hadron Collider is going to be something of a milestone, as it could eit...
Read more

milk and sugar?

I've been debating with my housemate as to whether tea or coffee is more popular world-wide. We've both done quick web-searches, and we've both got results to match our different claims. I say tea, he says coffee. So, to settle the debate, it's down to you. Do you prefer tea or coffee? Please leave a comment below - one word is all it takes.
Read more