What is my favorite piece of technology?

Well, this could easily turn into a really tough question, I mean, what is technology? Just to begin. If I were supposed to say something about that question, I would say that almost every tool that humans have made is technology; some people would argue that even language is technology, so the question could quickly led to a, kind of, philosophical question. But, for sake of the real focus of this question, I will choose my smartphone.

         What is a smartphone in any case? It’s a kind of minicomputer, where you can connect to internet and almost every social media. It has a lot of uses in fact, it’s like getting your laptop or pc in your pocket, you can check your e-mails, play some videogames, watch videos on YouTube, and oh, you can call people with this, is amazing, also you can see the time.

         The technology of smartphones update really fast, most of people renew his phone every year, my last smartphone bear with me 4 years give or take, I think I’m not a consumerist with this kind of technology. I acquired my actual phone three or four months ago.

         There is something that could be creepy I think, people is getting more dependent of its smartphones, I know that you could perfectly think, <Oh, this guy is like my uncle Joe> or something, ok, I take it, it’s kind of a concern of older people, but I have read that greek philosophers think that writing would be the end of memory, or a similar idea that people centuries ago have about books and novels, people is getting lonely and immerse in his reading forgetting the ‘real’ world and his beloved ones or something. ‘El Quijote’ it’s a kind of satire about that last idea.  So, what I want mean with this is people will always worry about new technologies (especially elder people). Now, what is interesting about smartphones (and I think this is a game changer) is that they are an extension of ourselves, in the social media or when we manage our money on them, even our health. We also can read books or every sort of information on them, what is interesting or worrying, I don’t really know, is how much information, or, how much of ourselves we put in them, we personalize it, we identify with it, even we say <My battery is out>, as if the smartphone were a part of us. What’s next? Implant it on our skulls? In our brains? How that could be normal? (And I think, it could definitely be normalized). I thought all of this because I really use it a lot, I can’t spend more than a few hours without checking it, for some people that’s is a lot of time, because there are people that can’t spend some minutes without checking it, still, I see myself as a dependent like everyone else who is immerse in this new technology. I see it as a revolution, like the consummation of the third industrial revolution or something.

         Perhaps, I’m a little, just a little, paranoid, I hope not become a paranoid android soon. Or a paranoid smartphone.

         In any case, I can’t imagine my life without it, it’s how I said before, a part of me, it put me in contact with all my friends and beloved ones, I can watch a lot of interesting contents and all the things that I need of internet (which is a lot, in this times), are in the reach of my hand.

         Sporadically, I imagine how would feel to break free from the facilities that this tech offers, not checking it, not seeing his vicious screen every five minutes or something. But in that case, I think I could not live in a city, because I would lose contact with the people that I like to be, the things that I like to do and well, everything would be more difficult. Smartphones are the way we have to live in this interconnected society and I don’t conceive another way to live in it. If I wanted to leave my smartphone, I’d prefer to leave all the things of the city, or the ‘interconnected social life’ and live a different kind of life, may be, when I grow older. May be a I like life this way, and complain too.