This phone’s too darn smart

By Joe Bushue

Boom!, Oct 30, 2009

Joe Bushue is a travel agent and lifelong Gresham resident who has been tolerating multiple sclerosis for 30 years. His column for BOOM! recounts some of the humorous sides of his disability and his slants on life in general. Reach him by e-mail at joebushue@hotmail.com.

At first, I wasn’t sure if I should hide behind a concrete wall or wear a hard hat. Between cell phones, fax machines, the Internet and computers that allow you to send pictures, I’ve been afraid of all the things that had to be flying unseen through the air.

I’m not so technologically inept as to think they could pose any real danger or problem. But recently, my friend was showing me her new iPhone. It made me think again.

She was showing me some of the many things her iPhone could do. Besides checking her e-mail, she could tell me our exact elevation. She could take a picture and forward it to someone else. If I wanted, I could watch an episode of “Gunsmoke” or the “Brady Bunch.” She could even hold it up to the radio and it could tell her the name of the song that was playing. It was starting to get scary.

I also find the spell check on my computer kind of scary. How does it know what word I really want?

But what made me really feel like I was on the outside edge of “The Twilight Zone” was when she pulled up Google Satellite. It not only showed us the pinpoint location of where we were, but it zoomed in on a picture from space to the point where I almost thought I could wave to myself.

And this only scratched the surface. It could even make phone calls!

I’ve never been one of those people who want to go someplace where there are no phones or TV or any other things that would distract them. But about now I was almost waiting to hear “Beam us up, Scotty.” I tried to figure out if I could get transported to that place where I was 20 pounds lighter and had a lot more hair. Even though my friend’s phone was about the size of, and looked like, a transporter straight out of “Star Trek,” that’s something it probably couldn’t do yet.

My cell phone, on the other hand, couldn’t take pictures, make movies or do of any of those other cool things. All it can do is make and receive simple phone calls (something I still find pretty amazing). I figure if I don’t get one of the do-everything phones, the more protected I’ll be from all the things that must be zooming around.

Facebook	Digg	Del.icio.us
Newsvine	Stumbleupon	Reddit