Saturday, April 22, 2017

Aitkin Age column: ePhones and smartbooks

My latest column for the Aitkin Independent Age is a somewhat curmudgeonly ramble about telephones, Daylight Savings, and indie publishing.

I recently got my first smartphone and I’m still trying to figure out how to use it. The keyboard buttons are too small so I always hit the wrong letter. When I do get the word spelled out, autocorrect changes it to something else. When someone calls, I peck at the “answer” circle frantically and ineffectually; a prompt reminds me I have to pull the edge of the circle out to the perimeter of a wider circle, like concentric ripples on water. But like how the inner ripple of a wave will never catch up to the ones forerunning it, by the time I get this done, the ringer stops and the caller is redirected to voicemail, which I haven’t found out how to access yet.
I didn’t even have a cell phone until after college. I think I was the only student there who didn’t and this made me rather pleased with myself. It was inconvenient at times, though. The art school was three miles away from the university and I didn’t drive, either, so my father, a professor, would drop me off and pick me up at the ends of my three-hour drawing and painting classes. One day he didn’t show up. The art school had just removed the pay phone from the lounge area – they must have reckoned everyone had a cell phone!
Read the rest here. 

Happy Easter!