Digital detox

Here's what's cool about the latest smartphones: You can do pretty much anything you want to do online right on the phone. No doubt that this has been available for some time, but, now it's only easier and more user-friendly and, in India, definitely affordable by the month. With the new phones emails, Facebook, Twitter and newsfeeds are integral to the basic user interface. As per Dec 2010 statistics, actually, smartphone prices are down close to 50% compared to 12 months back.I am not into gaming and related graphics. But I do admire the fact that so much power is packed in a chocolate bar sized device. Let me talk about how smartphones help me 'remain connected'. Or should I say helped me 'get connected'?

I enjoyed 'remaining connected' for a few months.I was proud to be among the tweeples. In fact, I was measuring my remaining connectedness quotient by the number of tweets I was skimming, number of pages I was turning on the multi-tab Opera browser, the number of tweets I throughput out there myself, checking emails the second they arrived (sometimes also checking whether the webpage on the laptop refreshed faster than the email loaded on my Blackberry), using my phone to follow my favourite photographers, reading friends' blogs, swapping and posting pictures etc. Do you know your Twifficiency score is? I know mine. 'Life is good, eh?'

Then one day, my beloved 8520 slipped out of my hands and fell just 2.5 feet down to the floor. 'No big deal', I thought. My sturdy 7130c had been well tested for impact from greater heights and more frequent drops from my son's little hands. (The joke used to be that I ought to let my son play the 7130c piece so that I could buy a new model. But, ...the...phone...just...wouldn't...die) Anyway, as luck would have it, the 8520 display went ashen and I was told the display module would be replaced under warranty.

I was back with my old faithful 7130c. I thought I would go into the classic cycle of denial, anger,(negotiation), depression and acceptance in the face of my 'recent digital disability'. What about all those unread tweets, all the pages waiting to be read, all the emails I would be visiting after the conversations had died? I expected to be more irritable etc.But, I no more miss 'being connected'.

It began by knowing that 8520 would be out of hands for about a week. So, I jump straight to the acceptance phase. Incidentally, we did some traveling that weekend and my mind got off the phone. When, at the end of the day, I would check my emails, tweets, blogs, etc, much was either not updated and if it was, not relevant at all. Now, not having received my phone even after a month just does not matter. Sure, I still need to see the news at lunch, tea time and just before leaving office. But that's normal. Trying to be the first one to read the news was not normal. Not being under a constant anxiety of being on top of the digital messaging deluge, was a huge relief, magically.

My family is happy to have me back. My son must have thought, as you must be too by now, that I "was nuts, but, whatever, buddy glad to see you without that black thingy clinging to your palm". I am glad to be back.

In the real sense of the term, I am more connected now than before.

PS: Some time back, I noticed an online chat between a husband and wife who were supposedly out for a dinner. They were instead chatting  about what they were noticing around them in the eatery; chatting (with tweets) over their mobile phones. You say crazy! I say toxic. Go detox.