One reads that the smart phone is the thing to have in this 21st century world we live in. Somehow that seems a misnomer. We have all experienced a lot of wonderful gadgets and seen more on TV, any version Startrek, or if you are old enough you might have seen Buck Rodgers serials in the movies.
Phones themselves are pretty amazing. You can talk to folks anywhere in the world. If you use one of those internet systems like Skype, it is not even very expensive. Many cell phones don’t charge for long distance. Some folks have eliminated the land lines entirely.
A lot of us have computers, internet email and many other of those miraculous capabilities. Texting over a phone is quite easy if you can type with your thumbs and certainly possible even if those darn keys are so small you have to type many words with your fingernails. If your equipment has that capability you can Google, or Bing, and find out an incredible amount of information.
There is no doubt that electronic technology is mind boggling. It may even be common place to the younger generation. This capability is most useful. Some of us older codgers have grown up with the beginnings of high tech.
When in college in the 1950’s my roommate and I built a computer that could add up anything as long as the total was less than eight. That total was our economic limit. After the basic circuitry was set it was just a matter of adding transistors, wires and display to get higher numbers. In those days the cost was prohibitive. Transistors were the size of a thumbnail and integrated circuits were yet to be invented by Intel. Nowadays you can get a computer called Raspberry Pi. Its cost is something like what a single transistor costs back then. The above is to point out that this guy is not an old technophobe, just an older gentleman.
However, it is a misnomer to call the equipment smart. It is dumb. Now the folks who thought of how to make all those things so small that they fit in your pocket or purse, they were smart. The folks who write the programs or apps are pretty clever also. In fact without them the equipment would be even dumber. Anyone who had ever programed knows that is a difficult task. The hardest part may be to figure out how to prevent users from making mistakes. Error trapping they call it. There are always more ways to make an error than the programmer thought possible.
It would be a little less courteous to say that the folks who use those “smart” phones are dumb. But, when you see folks walking along and their heads down and their thumbs pumping rapidly it is easy to wonder. Simply put, people have varying degrees of smart, but pieces of equipment rely on smart folks to make them work so smartly.
