Technostalgia

 

That there is the Nokia 3310, probably the best mobile phone ever made. The battery lasted for days and if there was a signal to be had, this little unit would find it. It was small enough to slip in any pocket and practically indestructible. I got one of these when they came out at the turn of the millenium and it served me well for a long time.

Now this one is the Sidekick "hiptop" - my upgrade when I was in transition out of grad school a few years later. Look at that physical keyboard! And that low-res black and white screen! Beautiful. I could stay connected via email and surf the World Wide Web - that scroll dial on the right moved the cursor from active spot to active spot on each site. I stayed in touch during my first academic job search using this device.

Now I have the latest in a series of whoop-de-doo smartphones sitting on my desk, with its touch screen and two cameras and huge memory and more computing power than NORAD had during the Cold War. Each iteration of this device gets "smarter" and more complicated to the point where it's doing things without me.

This is a Timbuktu vertical Blogger Bag. There was a time in the aughts when I carried this everywhere I went, so I could always have my laptop with me as I moved from coffee shop to coffee shop grading papers. I can't remember the last time I took a laptop anywhere - my Mac Air is buried in a drawer now. That smartphone does for me.

I guess this is progress. But sometimes I long for a simpler time, when it took a little more effort to stay connected, and there was less temptation to use miraculous technology to waste time falling down rabbit holes of listicles and cat pictures, even while waiting in line, and doomscrolling wasn't a thing.