5 Reasons I don’t have an iPhone

Everywhere you look nowadays, you see someone with an iPhone. They are forever looking at their screens instead of engaging in the immediate environment surrounding them.

Now, don’t get me wrong; I am just as guilty of being attached at the fingertips to my Macbook (when I’m home or at a coffeeshop) and have been known to text while socializing as well. Plus people will use any sort of distraction as an excuse not to be a part of the world around them. (I also have iPhone envy when you can tweet within a second and a half and don’t have to wait for a browser to load.)

But a commercial that I saw last night for the iPhone (not the one above, but that one made me giggle) made me grateful that I don’t have a portable tool that is that ingratiated into my life.

The person in the commercial was able to stand completely still on the street and book tickets for a show, tweet confirmation about the show to a friend, get directions to that show, answer a text, check-in with a location-based app, file away an email, and find the perfect restaurant to visit later that night.

That all sounds great from an efficiency standpoint, but he didn’t have to interact with a human being once in that entire scenario.

So here are just a few reasons I am grateful that I do not have an iPhone:

1. I can’t spend every event tweeting about it because it takes my browser longer to load and I don’t have the simplicity of an app to open.
This forces me to put down my cell phone and engage in the people and experiences going on around me and I will only bring the phone out to tweet about something if it is truly exceptional. It helps me to more easily discern what is profound and inspirational from what is cute and kitschy.

2. I have to have human contact in order to explore areas because I don’t have an app telling me where the highest rated restaurant/store/theater is.
This is a plus and a minus because on one hand, it eliminates the need to think completely and, let’s be honest, it can be a relief not to have to make yet another decision. But on the other hand, you are removing the interactions that make it possible to meet new friends and really get to know an area inside and out instead of just superficially.

3. I can appreciate the little things that make life what they are instead of outsourcing them to an electronic assistant.
Understand me, if I could have a robot to do my laundry and dishes (not a washing machine or a dishwasher, but an actual kick-ass housecleaning robot), I would in a heartbeat.

But for now, I have to do that crap on my own or pay someone to do it for me. The smaller things like picking out a restaurant with someone you care about or booking tickets to a show that you and a friend are dying to go to don’t need to be outsourced. They are part of the experience of life.

4. My very conservative uncle from Maryland won’t see any location-based updates or tweets and know that I’m a part of a grassroots campaign for a certain recently elected President and it will save me hours of grief at family holidays.
Every social site has its purpose and every site has its audience. By removing the temptation to over share information in such a convenient way, I can maintain a sense of privacy that everyone seems hellbent on breaching.

I am loud and I’m sure I over share as much as the next GenY blogger, but removing the very thing that would give me “twitchy fingers” is a blessing.

5. My memory is bad enough the way it is without outsourcing my brain.
I want to remember places I’ve been and people I’ve met. I want to know my friends’ and families’ birthdays by heart. I want to know their cell numbers by heart too that way when the technology fails, I won’t be hurting for information.  

I am definitely all for living in an electronic age, but I much prefer information like that to be kept in two places: my memory and the cloud. That way, I’m not dependent on a piece of equipment that will surely, at some point, fail to give me what I need or want.

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Basically, and like everything else, you have to find what works for you. I, personally, know that I need to stay away from iPhones and video games because I am 99.99% sure I would become addicted to both and then my life would just go downhill from there.

If my life were more hectic on a business level, then it would be a better idea to have such a tool that could decrease my level of stress and my workload.

Until then, I will smile at actual human faces at tweet-ups instead of avatars; I will ask someone in a store for directions because I crave humanity and fresh air; I will explore and wander in my surroundings and probably find some amazing people and places along the way that may not be listed on any app.

Tagged as: iPhone, technology