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A Phone With a View |
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Written by Scott Meadow
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Wednesday, 18 January 2006 (read 2825 times) |
 There goes digital photography.
For some people, this automatically requires several weeks of research
into possible new carriers, phone models, desired services, and cost
comparisons, while carefully reading the latest Consumer Reports.
In difference, I walked into the nearest mall some days later, a few
shots under my belt, found the Sprint kiosk and announced that I was a
Sprint customer and wanted to upgrade my phone. And no, I didn’t
bring my old phone with me or anything else besides my wallet and a
Frappuccino from the nearby Starbucks. Spontaneity is key.
The kiosk woman asked me some preliminary questions. I was
thankful that she did, in fact, bother to ask me things that only a
genuine me was likely to know off the top of his head, like my existing
phone number, last four digits of my social security number, and some
other stuff that I wasn’t paying attention to. Then she called
the main Sprint phone tree from hell, and determined that I qualified for a
“$150 phone credit” for upgrading, which means that I didn’t have to
pay full price. Then it came down to selecting an actual phone.
 The phones, frankly, all look alike. Of course, to Sprint Kiosk WomenTM
they are all wildly different. “For example, this one,” she tells
me, pointing to a phone at random, “has an interchangeable face plate,
whereas this one here,” she says, indicating a seemingly identical
phone, “is fine for your basic phone model.” I – apparently she
can tell this from the Sprint phone tree from hell – have dealt with a
“basic phone model” since 1999, and so she wants to show me something
comparable in this century. She’s appropriately condescending and
cheerful as she points out the quasi-godlike features of the far more
expensive model, picking it up lovingly, and handing it to me.
This thing has everything you’d want in a modern 21st Century Cell
Phone. For instance, it has a camera, camcorder, web browser, email and
instant message ability, games, video, music downloads, and has a
speaker-phone mode for when you truly want to disturb nearby people
with idiotic conversations with your spouse. “Yes, milk and
chocolate milk, I got it.” “Are you writing this down?”
“Yes, baby, I’ve got it.” “And pick up some girly things too, and
some more Crystal Lite. And Fat-Free Half and Half.” “Okay,
got it.” Now everyone knows her menstruation cycle. “And
pick me up some smokes.” “Okay. Anything else.” “Some
wine. Got that?” What ever did we do without cell speaker
phones?
The best thing, the kiosk woman tells me, is that I can try out all
these new services for free for 30 days. Just cancel if I don’t
like it. Well, okay, how I can argue with the Aristotelian logic
of Sprint Kiosk Saleswomen? It seems easy enough, so why not?
So I take one with everything: I get the camera, camcorder, email,
instant messaging (with Yahoo, AOL, or something else), voice memo
recorder, voice dialing, web surfing, email, along with their picture
emailing service, where you can email anyone the pictures you’ve taken
with your cell phone.
Okay, well I’m a kid in a candy store now. I’m surfing the
web in the restroom and taking pictures of all sorts of irrelevant
crap, but nothing in restrooms. I’m becoming a bit of a low-res
cell phone picture snob too.
Cell phone photography, it turns out, is all the rage, lowering the
quality of digital photography worldwide one simulated shutter click at
a time. Entire websites are dedicated to this questionable art
form, along with legislation to tame the perverts (“upskirt.com,”
“downblouse.org,” etc.). Blogs upon blogs have stumbled all over
themselves to capitalize on the combination of high-speed transmission
and low-resolution pictures, making it easy for people to share their
meaningless moments with millions of others who couldn’t care less.
As a result, we’re now able to document, in explicit detail, much more
human nature than was possible before in recorded history: all the
silly, pointless moments that make up day to day living are suddenly
showing up on the web with the artistic panache of a Goya
original. Each fifteen year old is her very own goofy Heidi Klum
and guys looking to score – always early adopters of high tech –
frequent online dating services that combine their cell’s GPS locator
and pictures with their bio, making them easy to find, but probably no
more interesting in person.
You can really appreciate this technological advance if you consider
all the historical wisdom that could be known today if only this stuff
had been around hundreds of years ago. Consider, for instance,
Bill Shakespeare. For decades scholars have debated key elements
of the Bard’s life, even his very identity. If cell cameras had
been around, not only would these questions be unquestionably resolved,
we’d have detailed intelligence of his daily acquaintances, drinking
habits, clothing choices, shopping experiences, educational
opportunities, travel patterns, daily neurotic tendencies, boyfriends
(or girlfriends, if the Oscar winning film is credible): in short,
everything you didn’t need to know and much, much more, until his
actual writings would become that “thing he did between drinking binges
and shopping at Spenser’s.” I’ll bet “wspeare.net” would
hit Alexa’s top 500, all without the NSA having to tap anything.
And no longer would have tedious debates about “what the Founding FathersTM
intended” when they wrote the American Constitution. We’d know,
all right. We’d know what Thomas Jefferson really did with his
female slaves, up to and including some very naughty 3x5 glossys, I’d
imagine, and who, among the FF’s really got into dusting their wigs and
who sort-of faked it. We’d have pictures of Thomas Paine
photographing his own feces and showing it to his frat brothers at
college keggers for years to come, and James Madison thumbing through
17th century girlie pictures cleverly masked by dusty English lawyerly
tomes. And I’m quite sure, given enough cell battery
life, that George Washington himself would be caught on a Quicktime
camcorder bitterly complaining about how cold it was at Valley Forge
and loudly pondering why, in God’s name, anyone would ever want to live
there.
Yep, it’s fun to imagine the possibilities. But it’s even more
fun to snap pictures and show them to your drinking buddies, who are
largely too screwed up to do much more than laugh and say, “Dude, take
another one!” while striking a clearly silly pose.
Maybe Douglas Adams was right after all, and coming down from the trees
was a big mistake. Maybe, but not nearly as fun. Here,
hang on: CLICK.
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