Cheap and Discriminating

Category: Tech Today

It was my mom's birthday the other day so I made a long-distance call using my mobile phone. After a friendly greeting and stories about Asia's weather, she asked me how I was doing. Without thinking I sighed and said: "I think I might have to finally invest in a smartphone." Instantly, my mom responded in our native language and in no uncertain terms said: "You're such a cheap bastard." (Thanks mom! And happy birthday again!)

The truth is if I ever get mugged in Belize, New Jersey or Jakarta, all they're going to find in my pockets are a 2008 Nokia E63, an iPod Touch which isn't even eligible for the iOS7 upgrade this year and maybe $5.00 worth of instant coffee. And I'm pretty sure my assailant will throw both devices and my instant coffee in my face in disgust. While riding Line 1 in Shanghai, I often pretend that the aforementioned iPod Touch, which I use religiously and was the best gift I've ever had, is an iPhone. This is mostly because the attractive ladies and the well-dressed office workers are all toting Samsung Galaxy, Apple or Lumia phones.

I have no complaints. Between my Linux machines, my iPad 2 (which I also received as a gift) and iPod Touch, I have all that I need to stay in touch with the rest of the world. Technology is supposed to make the world a better place and to make people more productive. When did it become a source of discrimination and prejudice? I can't go through the tech forums these days without running into some guy proclaiming that "Only poor people buy Android or Windows Phones!" or "I've had four smartphones and five tablets, what do you know?" Sometimes, discussions reach a point when it becomes very personal and offensive and the responses are clearly no longer just about the Android-Apple-Windows argument or about a particular brand or model.

I'm fully aware that the Internet has plenty of citizens who are hardly the best representatives of the human race nor is the Internet free of the evils of the real world. However, it's alarming to see technology, once viewed as pure and amoral, as a source of so much bitterness and pride. And it's not just limited to smartphones. I was reading news on the latest superhero movies over at Superherohype.com when there was a comment about how late the Blu-Ray release for Iron Man 3 was. A gentleman commented that a few months isn't so bad - when VHS was around fans had to wait for months before Raiders of the Lost Ark or Tim Burton's Batman was released on video. This poor guy, who was probably from my generation, received a scathing insult telling him that "...they had steam engines back then too. Go back to your bed, grandpa!"

"Better living through science and technology." That's what science textbooks used to headline. This is back when very few people could afford laptops. In those days, no one ever said "Haha, you're just running an 800Ghz processor? Haven't you ever heard of Pentium M?" or "64MB of RAM? Do you live in a shack somewhere?" People used to have power over technology and it now looks like it's the other way around. Who would ever thought consumer electronics would not only change people's way of working but also their behavior and attitude towards other people?

So, will I finally get a smartphone? As a working class Joe in the IT industry, I accept buying a smartphone for myself was inevitable. I'm glad I didn't tell my mom it took me 7 months to decide though.


Sadly, I spent years watching people use a smartphone (and like Sherlock borrowing someone else's too)
Screen capture from Sherlock (2010) DVD