The Last of the Luddites

I drive a '95 Altima sans GPS, own a 17-inch convex-screen TV, and, after a year and a half without a cell phone, have had the absolute most basic one for a year now (so basic, in fact, that I'm often asked if it's a toy). And I'm fine with my Luddite life. It's everyone else who is up in arms about it. 

"How can you live like that?!" they cry out in horror. 

My philosophy has always been that technology should enhance my life, not take over my life. In other words, when the GPS stops working can you still figure out where you are? When you drop your cell phone in the toilet, do you still know how to use a payphone (do you even know where to find a payphone? Do you even know what a payphone is?). I laugh when others ask me how I cook my food without a microwave, how I plan my day without a BlackBerry or iPhone, and how I communicate with my friends without going on Facebook. Honestly, I pitied these fools who had traded in a functioning brain for a new gadget. 

 

And then I fell in love. 

When my toy phone started malfunctioning, I figured I would just give it up and go au naturel again. But one day I was walking past a phone store and something greater than me compelled me to go in and browse, just browse, the display case of shiny new phones. Like a customer sampling every flavor of ice cream at Baskin Robbins, I asked the assistant to pull out almost every phone for me to touch and test. I told him right up front that I was probably not going to buy one, and he just smiled and nodded. Not a declaration he was unfamiliar with, I'm sure. 

Very gently, hardly even intruding upon my personal space, he told me to go ahead and try out the touchscreen phones (after stifling a snicker at the standard keypad on my toy phone). 

"It's too weird," I complained. 

"I'm used to the old keypad," I whined. 

"There's too much info on this phone - I just want to talk and text," I insisted as my heartbeat picked up. 

And so I walked out of that store with my new Android smartphone. I have to admit it made me feel abundant, extravagant, grown-up, modern! 

I headed over to a coffee shop to meet my friend and spent the first half hour showing off my new phone, making him call and text me several times to test out various display screens and ringtones, pulling up our destination on the GPS even though I knew precisely where we were, gently laying it on a napkin to avoid the sticky table.... After he'd courteously admired it for as long as he could take, he stopped my enamored giggles cold with one line: "Now you're one of us."

My smile dropped. Oh dear. It was true. I had become one of them.

At that moment I lost my coveted martyr status of The Last of the Luddites. I could no longer make fun of the people who gaze at their gadgets more steadfastly than at the person across the table from them. I could no longer feel superior about arriving at my destination on Mapquest printouts and good ol' fashioned intuition. I could no longer point my accusatory finger and blame 'them' for everything that was wrong in the world. 

I was now one of 'them.' I worried that I was no longer special, that I would blend in with the masses, that I, too, had sold my soul and traded in a functioning brain for a new gadget. 

As I drove to pick up this same friend for lunch a few days later, he texted me 'are you and the phone engaged yet?' I laughed, but still worried about my soul. Until he hopped into my 15-year-old car and said, "Can't this horse and buggy go any faster?" I smiled broadly. I still retained my Luddite status and therefore my individuality in this technological age. 

Oh wait, was that a Nissan dealership we just passed...?



Originally published on In The Powder Room.