Spice of Life: Smart phone with handy feature for dumb users
Now that we are prisoners of our own making, I have one last appeal. Can the phone, which is omnipotent and omni prescient, please announce its presence whenever it is lost?
This may sound delusional and hallucinatory but I am getting more than a little frightened by the presence of my cellphone. Yes, you heard it right. This little rectangular slab of plastic and metal lying placidly in a corner definitely has the portents of evil!
It looked innocuous enough when I bought it, showcased along with thousands of others mounted on racks and displayed on tables like pieces of expensive and exclusive jewellery. The showroom was this huge hushed expanse with subtle and muted lighting where the sales people wore black gloves, glided towards you noiselessly and gave benign smiles while casually spouting the exorbitant prices of each item.
Of course it made a huge dent in my pocket. Of course I fell, hook, line and sinker, like millions of my fellow men to the company’s notorious ploy of exclusivity and snob value but now the phone has taken on shades of silent wickedness, its smooth black shape glittering craftily and I’m convinced it has ears and can hear every dialogue.
It also seems to possess extra sensory powers because it has gauged my moods and interests. Any conversation, any discussion, any debate on a certain topic and, lo and behold! I immediately start getting advertisements in that context.
It’s eerie but true. We were planning a holiday abroad and the next time I opened my phone there were advertisements for cheap flights, tours and hotels. Before the birth of my twin granddaughters and even now my phone, when I open it, is inundated with sales on toys and baby clothes and other mouthwatering offers.
It’s as if there is this little monster, clothed in different colours and shapes, chuckling quietly to itself, gloating at our gullibility and greed because we have very stupidly invited it into our private lives. We don’t leave home without it, it is our friend, companion and tutor. Today, we are literally sleeping with the enemy, our phone is the first and last thing we look at as we wake up and before retiring for bed. It is privy to every word we utter and also like Big Brother in George Orwell’s book, 1984, privy to our thoughts, thus capable of steering our choices and forming our opinions, at will.
The harmlessly innocent ‘cookies’ that appear every time we browse our phones and are usually forced to accept are there to enhance user experience, yes, but at the same time they remember our preferences, track online behaviour, location and search history. I can shut off my microphone so the internet service providers, a.k.a. Google, Adobe, Amazon will not be able to actively listen in, but anything I search for automatically becomes part of an algorithm and is stored for further use.
All this is not some grand revelation. We are adults and know what we are doing. It is just very hard to accept that we, intelligent and smart people are knowingly set on this path of self-destruction and vulnerability.
Now that we are prisoners of our own making, I have one last appeal. Can the phone, which is omnipotent and omni prescient, please announce its presence whenever it is lost?
The writer is a Jalandhar-based freelance contributor and can be reached at pallavisingh358@gmail.com
