Digital Analogue

Forget "where's my jetpack?", I want to know...

For Christmas, I got a wristwatch.

There's sort of a longer story there, but suffice it to say that I had been without a wristwatch for three or four years and had pretty thoroughly adapted to using my cellphone for the purpose. But I like a lot of old things and old-fashioned things, so I was grateful to wear a wristwatch again if only for the light affectation of it.

How quaint! He's wearing a watch! Do they even make those anymore?

Within a few days I was remembering to check it instead of going for the phone in my pocket. Within a few weeks (i.e. yesterday) I was annoyed when I accidentally left it at home, because I kept checking my blank wrist; and you know what? It's actually kind of annoying to have to fish your phone out of your pocket to check the time. Also, way harder to be subtle about it.

Today I followed that thought to its logical conclusion. If it's more convenient to carry the time on my wrist than to have to fish the phone from my pocket, wouldn't it be more convenient to carry the other functions of the phone on my wrist? I mean, people have been joking for years that if phones get any smaller we won't be able to see them (though smart phones arrested this trend somewhat), so the miniaturisation is totally on track to do this. Keypads would have been tricky to fit in there, but now everything's all touchpad-y so we might be ok there; and we would have needed both hands for an onscreen keyboard, maybe, except now that everybody's raving about Siri you can just hold your phone to your mouth and talk to it to tell it what to do.

There was a vogue a few years back lamenting the 1930s and 1950s visions of the future that still hadn't yet come to pass, often summed up with the pithy remark, "Where's my jetpack?" But now I'm thinking, hey, forget the jetpack—where's my wristphone?

...it's coming. Soon.

"We may not always like what the First Amendment permits, but we've agreed as a nation that the short-term aggravation of personal offense is the tithe we pay for freedom." --Kathleen Parker