Dragged, Kicking and Screaming

Yes, I get it, I'm a dinosaur.
Aged, ancient, anile, antediluvian, antique, archaic...and that's just the a's.
I'm expecting the comet to hit any day now.
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It was twelve years years ago, the first time it happened. We were moving. We asked Bell to come out and perform whatever arcane ritual they used to render our phone service operational at the new address. I have never forgotten the ensuing conversation.

Bell boy, whose left ball still hadn't dropped: "We'll need a contact number where we can reach you on your moving day."
Eva: "Umm, that's why you're coming...to connect our service."
Bell boy: "Either yours or your husband's cell number will be fine."
Eva: "We don't have a cell phone."

The Bellboy was quite taken aback. He rallied admirably and attempted to sell her one, but was utterly flummoxed when she told him she had zero interest in one.

That changed over the years. Eva eventually succumbed and joined the ranks of the iPhone zombies, and has since upgraded twice. However, unlike so many, she has not had her phone surgically attached to her arm.
I, meanwhile, have rarely felt any desire whatsoever to detach my desktop and carry it around in my pocket. As the saying doesn't go but should, if you can bring home with you everywhere you go...why leave home?

I have railed in the past against texting. I'll do it again here, because sooner or later somebody might listen to me and see sense.

Texting is absolutely, without doubt, the most abominable method of communication we humans have yet devised.
For one thing, it lacks all humanity. You can't see the person you're communicating with; you can't even hear their voice. You've been reduced to words on a screen. By choice. You have a phone in your hand, the least you can do is dial a number and talk to someone--but that's considered rude now, on the grounds that a phone call must be answered (oh, really? what is voice mail for, then?)  Not to mention that texting allows people to concentrate on other things and still have some pale facsimile of a conversation. Oh, yes, please, let me multitask, I will only spare a fraction of my attention for you.
There are times when the world should demand your undivided attention, such as, for instance, when you're driving. There are other times when it's only appropriate to give the person you're speaking with typing to some undivided attention. Neither of these things is done much at all now, because we've convinced ourselves that multitasking is ever so much more productive. (Guess what? It isn't.)

I find texting ever so much ruder than telephony by dint of sheer volume. Imagine if your phone rang every time someone so much as cleared her throat. You'd smash every phone you saw to smithereens after no more than a day or two. But someone can text a throat-clearing equivalent and your pants will vibrate. Every single sentence or sentence fragment will set off your pants, and you'll reach in there like a dog after a bone, no matter what might be going on in front of you. Tell me how that's not rude.

I'm going to go relatively easy on text-speak: it has its place, and it doesn't bother me as much as it used to. That said, there are still things that grate on me. Apostrophes take two extra precious keystrokes, so they have been abolished, and the need to conserve keystrokes at the expense of all meaning has reached apotheosis with 'ily'--which means 'I love you' (but not enough to bother typing out the five missing letters, it's far too much work).

I will rant against the ergonomics. I know some people -- well, most people, to be honest -- who are dab hands at texting. The speed with which they can pick out words on those itty bitty pin-sized keyboards  is nothing short of incredible. (Mind you, I'm pretty sure I can still talk considerably faster: even a regular conversational pace is beyond all but the best texters.) Short of devoting my life to the task over the text five years or so, I can't ever hope to attain anywhere near the proficiency of my friends. My thumb touches six keys on a BlackBerry keyboard, or four on an iPhone screen--which, by the way, lacks any sort of tactile reinforcement that has informed my typing since grade four. The mechanics of texting also mean that whatever message I'm struggling to assemble will be interrupted at least once, likely by a message that renders half or all of what I'm pecking out completely irrelevant. Start over.

And then, of course, there's autocorrect. There are many websites littered with hilarious examples of autocorrect in action, and every time I read one, I ask myself through my laughter why seemingly nobody reviews a text message before pressing SEND. I can't help but think at least ninety percent of "autocorrect fails" are one hundred percent intentional. But then again, I have a horror of looking stupid in public. Evidently it's not a horror widely shared.

I said all that to say this.

I am going with the flow...sort of. I 'text' my friends through Facebook chat. This has (or had, I'll get to that)--all of the advantages of texting for them and all of the advantages of email for me. I can type on this human sized keyboard. There's no autocorrect, so unless my brain executes a Freudian strip, uh, slip--you know those? where you say one thing and mean your mother?--let's just say if you see the word dildo I probably meant to type it.
I'm at home, at my desk, able to divide my attention between multiple tabs or shut everything down and give you all of me, as dictated by the content of our conversation. (If you're crying as you type, please be assured I'm not off playing Candy Crush waiting for your next sentence.) Each utterance in Facebook chat--just like a text, unlike a phone call--can be ignored or responded to at will. Best of all, it's free. Oh, not literally: of course I'm paying for a net connection and letting Facebook data-mine me to the moon in the bargain. But it's still a bargain--I'd have the net connection anyway and with this I can communicate with my friends whether they're next door or in Australia, all at no additional cost.

That's how it used to be.

Facebook, for reasons known only to Facebook, has divorced itself of the chat function for mobile users. Which is most of them: of the fifteen or so people with whom I even occasionally chat, fewer than five are using a computer to do it. The problem is that now, if you want to access Facebook chat on mobile, you need a standalone messenger app that is almost universally hated for its nosiness and its poor design. Most of my friends either never downloaded it at all when they saw the list of permissions it asks for (you basically sell your eternal soul)...or they downloaded it and deleted it in short order when they saw how much it sucked.
You can leave your mobile browser open to http://m.facebook.com and use Facebook chat that way--but it's not as streamlined as the standard iOs/Android Facebook app. One of my friends is kind enough to do it this way, so I can still chat with her, But she's complained that this is far from convenient. Her kindness is not infinite and I'd prefer not to test its limits if I help it.

In short, if I want to communicate with my friends the way I've been doing for years, for "free"...I'm going to have to spend seventy bucks a month on a cell phone, which will render our communications very infrequent because people will quickly become impatient with my inability to text a coherent sentence in anything less than three minutes.

Gee, thanks, Facebook.

Eva has told me that once I get a job--the search is ongoing and will pick up markedly upon completion of the French course that begins next week--I will be provided with a cell phone. I am of mixed minds on this. I still consider cell phones to be for Very Important Personages and the fact that everyone considers himself a VIP nowadays is mildly irritating. (Antediluvian, ancient, archaic...) But the biggest thing is--I don't need one. Or at least I shouldn't. I'm either home, at work/school, or en route between those places. I'm reachable at either end of my journey and the journey isn't long.

(Then again, a cell phone might have been handy to have in London the other day, or on future like excursions which will become a valued part of my life going forward.)

Another concern has to do with my klutziness. When--not if--I drop my phone and it shatters, I'm suddenly incommunicado until I can save up for a new one. That alone will probably keep the landline in this house.

And finally, being brutally honest, I really have no wish to become the creature I see so often now: half man, half machine, possessing eyes only for his device, never actually seeing anything or anyone but making sure his phone sees all. Watch something like the Olympics or a concert on television and you won't see a crowd any more...just a crowd of phones. It's depressing. Again, dehumanizing.

I've often said that if you give me the ability to go online away from this desk, I'd be terrified of never getting offline. That remains a real concern. The pull of the internet, especially its social side, is fearsome for me. I will probably opt for something that allows me to text but little else--if such a thing even exists anymore. And then I'll have to practice texting myself for a few months or something just so I don't unduly inconvenience my friends.

Sigh.