Things I might be doing with my smartphone apart from what you may think
6:35 a.m., I wake up and turn on my smartphone. I first scan notifications, even before lumbering to the kitchen and making myself some coffee. No coffee, no Cristina.
As I sip my coffee, I open Twitter. Has anything happened during the night that I need to know? No? Ok.
I open my inbox and delete no less than 10 spam emails. Is there anything interesting? No? Ok.
I open Slack. Everything under control.
I open Facebook. Check out the notifications. Ok. I can now read for a while without interruptions.
I open Medium and dive into my favorite reads until it’s time to move on to my next task, around 7:00 a.m.
I never talk to anybody until I truly wake up, and this happens after the second coffee and the second read.
But the truth is that apart from interacting on social media, smartphones have many more uses. They really are pocket computers. So I started thinking about all the things I do with my smartphone.
Reading
Anything. A blog, an article, a book, an email, a document. That’s something you can do without a smartphone, but with a smartphone you can switch from one app to another in a faster way.
Pictures
Although I own a camera, I rarely use it; I take pictures with my phone. Not only that, but some of them need a little retouching, which I do in my spare time. There are hundreds of photography apps.
Work out
I check my walking and cycling stats every day. If you are a crazy runner, you can also compete with fellow crazy runners.
Find interesting places
You need to find a pub to meet someone and you are not sure about which pub. Open your smartphone and trust other users’ comments and recommendations. Same thing for restaurants, hotels, sightseeing spots…
Cards
Some of my rewards cards are on an app. It feels so good not to need to carry all my cards with me all the time.
My Taxi / Uber
Self-explanatory.
Banking / Health services / Education
Yeah, before smartphones, we needed to sit in front of a computer to do some of the things we can now do with a couple of finger swings. I can deposit a check, book an appointment, and take a course, all in the comfort of my Lazy Boy.
No more time wasted at a queue. No more time wasted during our commutes when we forget the book we were reading at home. Anything and everything is in your pocket. Oh, and I haven’t even touched on social media yet, because yes, we sometimes want to know about one of our friends without necessarily talking to them (maybe we know it’s a bad hour for them, maybe we are voiceless.)
If you don’t want to get as many notifications as you are getting, just turn them off. That’s not a problem for the smartphone — that’s your problem. If you don’t pay attention when walking down the streets because you’re Whatsapping, again that’s not a problem with the smartphone, that’s your problem.
Could you say today there really are two different worlds, online and offline? Tell me where one of these two worlds ends and the other begins. And more than this, I know what a cosmic coincidence is. Cosmic coincidences happen online and a smartphone is just an extension of the online world, the pocket edition.
How could I be against it?
