Smart Phone - Dumb User

Apparently, as I read recently in the press, this is the summer of smartphones.

So that's what it has come to. Our parents had the luck of living through summers of love in the 60s. On the flipside, they also had winters of discontent in the 70s, but at least it involved some kind of emotion.

Our generation, however, has summers of smartphones.

Don't get me wrong, I love my iPhone. It's fun to have a cool little computer in your pocket and I find myself surfing the web on it at home, despite the proximity of a proper computer that I could use to display webpages on a 17' screen rather than 3.5'.

Does it make my summer however? Surely not. In fact, I could well do without it. My old dumbphone the size of a brick was able to do phone calls just as well, and whilst I was recharging my batteries on holiday, it rarely ever needed to. My smartphone however, needs even more recharging than I do.

Admittedly, surfing the web on the go is a lovely thing. A confessed news-addict, I enjoy staying updated wherever I am. But there is a slight difference between information and knowledge. Being able to google something everywhere doesn't make me cleverer, it makes me better informed.

Whilst waiting to pick the family up at the airport the other week, I found myself stuck in a crowded Costa Coffee with just my phone and TheLondonPaper I had picked up on the way. After the usual Facebook shenanigans and a round of Trism and Scrabble each, I found myself reading the (rather-trashy-but-not-as-bad-as-London-Lite) paper and solving crossword puzzles.

The whole world is at my fingertips, and all I worry about is "verse-type, 6 letters, ending with T".

Maybe it's just me who isn't smart enough. I am afraid that once my phone finds out, it will leave me for somebody smarter.

After my contract runs out that is.