My [life] Is Full Of Phone Hang-ups

The Age

Saturday August 23, 2008

Suzy Freeman-Greene - Suzy Freeman-Greene is an Age journalist

ANYONE who doubts the phone is now God hasn't been to Telstra's new T[life] shop. This pretentiously named megastore, on the corner of Bourke and Swanston streets, is so white and high-tech, so spacious and surreal, that it might be a nightclub or a spaceship or some funky modern church.

There are white leather stools; free bottles of water and mobile phones laid out alluringly on long benches. Signs invite us to pick up a mobile and watch TV on it, or catch a movie preview or find directions. Or we can just head straight to nirvana (the iPhone) and take in its array of options: from sharemarket news, a calculator and YouTube to maps, email and iPod.

It's fun for a while, hanging around watching YouTube clips, until you start trying to decipher the typical payment plan. Spend much longer contemplating so many phone models and billing deals and all those screens, sounds and sheer possibilities can be brain-numbing.

The T[life] store is the latest, most grandiose manifestation of our love affair with the techno-gadget. Author Douglas Coupland has observed that our very perception of time is now measured in tech waves rather than calendar years. He recently bumped into an old workmate and the pair had the following exchange: "I haven't seen you since . . . eBay!" "I haven't seen you since . . . Google!" "I haven't seen you since . . . BlackBerrys!"

Now, in the iPhone epoch, the mode of content delivery can seem more important than the actual content. The gadget itself, and the possibilities it contains, are celebrated as a form of creative expression. What you do with it is another matter.

Things are moving so fast that it becomes daunting if you fall behind in the race. (But whose race is it? And how did I enter it?)

Recently I became hopelessly flustered when I received a video message on my mobile and realised I didn't know how to open it. I pressed some buttons, got lost, managed to find my way back to my inbox and gave up. Needless to say, I don't have an iPhone.

I know, I know. Mobiles have changed my life (or at least my social life). The net has revolutionised everything, shrinking distances and subverting hierarchies, and if I were just a bit more focused, if I cared a bit more, I could be photographing my toes, finding a restaurant and downloading songs as I wrote this column on a phone. But if you don't have a lot of spare time (or money) and you're not the world's most practical person, it can be kind of stressful negotiating your way around these constantly morphing gadgets.

Beyond all the hype about iPhones, I suspect quite a few other people are similarly freaked out by their mobiles' capabilities - not to mention their pricing plans. The T[life] store, for example, is conducting free workshops in an auditorium on topics such as web browsing on your mobile. It even offers "premium" customers (i.e., not me) a personal tutorial from a "Telstra mentor" on how to use your techno-bling.

But T[life]'s unique atmosphere of play and self-improvement is really just another way of locking us into some expensive phone contract. (Rent on the site alone, formerly a Nike superstore, is reported to be $2.5 million a year.) And, already, the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman is hearing from consumers who have racked up bills of thousands of dollars on their fancy, web-browsing phones.

To be honest, I've got better things to do than watch TV on a screen the size of a cigarette pack. I find daydreaming to be an under-rated activity and, much as I love the web, I don't want to be constantly attached to it.

So I was heartened to read recently in The Los Angeles Times that in Silicon Valley - home of the techno-gadget - a growing number of companies are banning BlackBerrys, iPhones and laptops from meetings.

Linda Stone, a software executive who has worked for Apple and Microsoft, said many people now felt the need to be connected all the time, "as a live node on the network".

And Professor Pamela Hinds of Stanford University, who studies the effects of technology on groups, told the newspaper: "It's increasingly difficult to get people's undivided attention."

Perhaps Sue Fox, author of Business Etiquette for Dummies, best summed up the phenomenon. "Today," she observed, "people seem to be more focused on their fancy gadgets than on other people".

Suzy Freeman-Greene is an Age journalist.

© 2008 The Age

Back to News Index | Back to Home