Everyone Has One, and it's Fucking Ridiculous

Everyone has an iPhone.

Or at least it seems that way.

When I was on the bus the other day, I was texting on my own iPhone and looked up briefly to check if it was close to my stop yet. I noticed just by shear happenstance that a lot of other passengers were also texting. At first, I kinda laughed, as if to say, "Oh god, we're all so absorbed in our technology that we're texting." But then I noticed that not only were 10 of the 15 people on the bus (including myself) texting, but literally every one of those 10 people (including myself) was using an iPhone.

What kind of insanity is this??

Now, in no way am I complaining. Seriously. I love my iPhone, it's the best thing ever. It's simultaneously the most useful and unnecessary device ever created. But I took a minute and thought about something. And it made me feel like an old person because it was a thought of technological astonishment:

How is it that we've come to a point in time where it is normal for people to have the world at the touch of a finger on a glass screen in the palm of their hand?

It's really crazy when you think about it. If you'd told people in the 1800's that there was going to be something called a cell phone which would allow you to contact other people who also owned a cell phone. Even if they lived on the other side of the world. And it would take seconds. Well, they probably would have thought you were a witch or something.

In the 1950's, someone probably would have told you to go write a science fiction novel. At that time, computers took up literally entire rooms and sometimes even buildings. Then when cell phones did become common, who would have thought (besides Steve Jobs) that you would be able to own something with a touch screen?

Who the fuck is smart enough to think of and then actually invent this shit?? It's incredible! Have you ever looked at a touch screen anything and just thought about how awesome it is? How much thought went into creating it? You have the information of the world in your hand and you can see it clearly, listen to music, check the weather, make notes for yourself, cycle through different and complex windows by dragging your finger across a piece of glass and it allows you to contact people world wide in a matter of seconds.

It's crazy how often people (myself included) take these pieces of technology for granted. I'm sure you've heard this before, or maybe you've even said it yourself.

"God, this message is taking so long to send."

or

"Dammit, I don't have any service here."

Let's take it back to when people had to write letters by hand with a quill and ink and send them by boat. The person to whom they were writing the letter might be freakin' dead when it finally gets to them after a month, maybe longer. And they have no way of knowing that the boat didn't sink or the courier didn't die before delivering the message. And if the person did get the letter and wrote and sent a response, it would be easily another month at least before the initiator of the correspondence would receive the response. At which time the initiator might also be dead, or not get the letter for whatever reason etc.

I guess what I'm trying to say here (and it might sound kinda preachy, but I'm gonna attempt to follow my own advice here as well), is that we should really try to appreciate all the things we have, I don't mean just the technology. Think about the stuff you have, the people you have, the things you're good at, the things you believe in, everything. I'm not saying you should be ridiculous about it, but taking a moment to think about how much all of those things mean to you and how important or amazing they are I think is a valuable thing. To be able to recognize what you have instead of dwelling on what you don't, cause I guarantee that there will always be someone who has less than you do.