Sunday, April 13, 2008

We Are Our Phones

A history of family phones in Flickr. Phone in bottom row, second from left is back in action, ugly but serving me well enough. -jk
Phones
Originally uploaded by jkrauss

I was working at a study table in the public library the other day when a guy nabbed my purse. Within ten minutes he was buying cartons of cigarettes at $38 a pop and selling individual packs to street folks for easy cash. My driver's license was found in front of the county JAIL (hmmm) but that's all I got back.

Among the lost items? My 2 year-old magenta Razr phone.
Instead of getting a new phone and committing to another two year service contract (I'm anticipating a new 3G iPhone in June-- I'll wait), I decided to buy a $20 sim card and put it in an old unlocked phone.

While I was waiting to be helped at the t-mobile store I watched a newly desperately phoneless young woman trying to get back in action. She was broke and trying to figure out how to get back to 24/7 texting and talking without having to settle for a plain-jane phone. She overspent "just a little", committed to another two year contract with t-mobile, and left very, very happy. When I got home with my sim card I rummaged through our pile of retired and mostly broken phones and found the funky unlocked one. Back in business.

Interesting what's become essential to modern life these days. How much of your identity is balled up with the phone you carry? Mine, not so much (I say that now.)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I now use a Sony Ericsson phone. Much better than my old Nokia phone. Well for me, as long as the mobile phone's easy to use and as long as I can send an sms message and make a call, I'm fine with that.