Year of no new electronics...

Like most of my goals for the year of 2014, this one was kind of broken when I,

a) had to buy a new phone in March when my iPhone 5's screen went all hot and bothered with pixels misfiring and general glitchy strangeness. Jill says that doesn't count because I needed a phone. I did buy the exact phone I wanted though --a yellow iPhone 5C-- because I'm extravagant like that.

b) bought Michael's old 3DS. M says that doesn't count because it's not new.

Buuuut, something interesting has happened:

1) I'm really really happy with all of my current technology without any plans to upgrade.

I love my phone (though as SOON as I can leave Verizon for Virgin Mobile/a plan that's 50$ less each month, I'm doing it!) a lot. The battery life is spectacular on the 5C and it's so freaking cute with its canary yellowness. The camera in it is amazing and it does everything I'd ever want it to do.

I'm really enjoying the 3DS with Animal Crossing: New Leaf and Mario Kart 7. Totally worth the huge discount my husband gave me on a great gaming device.

I appreciate my iPad mini and don't see that there would be any reason to upgrade it anytime soon.

Even my computer is now approaching four years old and I'm considering buying more storage and memory for it, but I don't want to abandon it at all.

The previous statements are SERIOUS progress for me. I don't feel that I need ALL the new things! The last several years I've talked myself into buying each new iPhone, several iPads and other various devices.

2) I completely forgot about the huge Apple Event today announcing the new iPhone 6 until Michael mentioned it to me at 930 this evening. I completely FORGOT. Usually I am glued to cnet.com watching all the live coverage for Apple's events announcing new products and this year I FORGOT.

I'm officially considering my electronics addiction broken. There will be further temptations. When the new iPad mini comes out with a color-corrected screen (the current model has some issues with color accuracy...yes, I notice that shit) I'll want it. But I'll resist because I don't even need an iPad. Really, I don't. I have an ereader and I have a smartphone. Sometimes I go days without using my iPad. I prefer to read on my ereader and if my iPad isn't rightthere I use my phone instead.

I want to beef up my computer. I want 500GB of hard drive and 8GB of memory...maybe while I've got Honeycrisp on the operating table I'll replace her battery as well. However, I have no desire to get one of the new Macbook Pros because they don't even have a disc drive and the cheapest model is 1300$.

In other news, the iPod classic (the last remaining iPod with the iconic click wheel) was quietly taken off the Apple website today. Sad. That click wheel made it just over ten years and is still one of the big reasons I became obsessed with Apple's design. I'll use my iPod classic I got in 2011 until the day it dies...probably even then I'll scour ebay for a new one.

Anyway, I'm taking a moment. It's a big deal for me to realize my 2014 goal of not buying new electronics has actually had the effect I wanted it to have. I don't check cNET every day anymore. I'm not up to date on all the new devices. I still follow Apple's new products, but I actually truly don't feel like I NEED to own all of them.

Yay me.

TV in the kitchen.

I worry about the effects of forever-connectivity on our social culture.

Also, the last few days I've been thinking about how massive smartphones are getting. Like physically massive. They're getting so ridiculously huge that they might as well be called tablets. And what's the difference between a phone and a tablet these days if the size doesn't distinguish? Why do I have a laptop and a tablet and an ereader and an iPod and a phone? If phones keep getting bigger will we eventually reach a point where we just say "fuck it" and just carry our laptops with us everywhere? I mean, we might as well.

I listened to a podcast today that was speaking to this issue and the hosts brought up examples...like, we make reservations for dinner from an app on our phone and then check in on foursquare when we get to the restaurant and then we upload pictures of our food to Instagram when it gets to the table and on and on. Frequently, when out at dinner or a bar or a show all I can see are blue-light tinged faces sucked into their "dream machines" as my mom calls all handheld devices since my GameBoy in the '90s. The boys on the podcast mentioned an article comparing our relatively new smartphone era (the iPhone has only been out 6 years, though it feels longer) to the "TV in the Kitchen" phase when TVs had become such a member of American families that we started letting them interrupt our dinner. But this phase arguably (though I still know people with televisions in their kitchen) didn't last long. One can hope that smartphones will fade into our pockets in a few more years and they won't be the downfall of human interaction like a lot of us are foretelling.

I am so torn on this issue. On the one hand, I'm hopelessly in love with aluminum electronic devices that keep me plugged into the Matrix. But I worry about how fragmented my time has become by checking my phone every five minutes. I used to be very strict about keeping my phone out-of-sight out-of mind in social situations. I still hardly ever take pictures in the presence of others and I never answer my phone when I'm with friends, but so many of my friends just have their phone's screen up-and-at-the-ready on the table and I've started doing it too. But I want to be present. I still will not take my phone out at concerts because the pictures/videos you take will be crappy and distract from your experience in the moment. The lens through which we view the world organically (our eyeballs/brains/etc) is still farrrr superior to the 8MP lens on our phone camera. The sensory world is something I feel I am missing more and more. While I relish the opportunity to plug in and tune out the world sometimes, I'm overusing this tool. For fuck's sake, as I'm writing this blog I'm getting texts that alert me on my phone, my tablet, and my computer simultaneously in case I miss a single emoticon.

Don't even get me started on social media. There's TOO much! Google +, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter, Goodreads, Pinterest...ahhhh. They all have their advantages, of course. I go to Facebook to actually get ahold of people I know in my life. I go to Instagram to upload pictures of my animals. I go to tumblr to get validation for being a weirdo. I avoid Twitter and Pinterest and Google+ most of the time....but they're tools too. I'll use them to promote this blog. It's maddening. It would be nice if we were all connected to one conglomerate social media that was infinitely customizable...oh, wait, that's just sitting in front of a person and fucking talking to them. What?

As introverted as I am, I still prefer face-to-face when it comes to my real connections, my top ten friends and family.

All this blathering is to say that I'd like to make some parameters for myself...boundaries between me and my technology. My first move was to delete all but Tumblr, Facebook, and Instagram from my social media folder in my phone. Next, I think it would behoove me to unfollow a chunk of people on my Instagram and Tumblr to remove the temptation to get sucked into those worlds. I tend to scroll through those sites until I'm updated on EVERYTHING, which has got to be the mark of insanity. I get up every morning two hours before work in order to play with my tablet while drinking my coffee. True, I got up that early before the smartphone era, but then I was READING and/or WRITING.

And how much do you hate Facebook these days? It's gotten to the point that people seem to think just because you're friends on Facebook that you have seen and memorized all the details of their lives and the lives of our mutual friends. It often seems that people are continuing a conversation with me in person that started with a pictures of someone's granddaughter online assuming I have seen every single update on Facebook. Or that I want to see every single update on Facebook. And how weird is it when someone from high school you haven't seen SINCE high school runs into you at Target and already knows everything that's going on with you because you posted it on Facebook and forgot to make your post "friends only"? Social media is this weird privacy invasion we all signed up for!

Just in the time it's taken me to write this blog I've gotten an email and a dozen or so text messages. Maybe I should turn the alerts off on my phone too. This world of immediacy is driving me bonkers. I feel like I don't hone in on a task anymore...the distractions are constant. I feel like I'm about to have some sort of meltdown and go back to my pink Razr, sell my tablet, and just log onto the internet for an hour at the end of the day like I did back in high school. I had a social life back then. And I got lots of exercise too. Damn screens are ruining my life!! I don't really mean that. I love you, screens. Don't ever leave me.

top 5 bits of technology you already have.

As a "red-blooded Amerrrrican female" most of my problems, as one might expect, are first world problems. Ever since the tornado (I can call it by its actual name now! Progress?) my obsession with technology and the possession of the newest, brightest, shiniest electronic gadgetry has been ratcheted up to its most perverse and unhealthy level. For a time I claimed, as the daughter of a similarly afflicted (recently deceased) father, it was my penance to carry on his legacy of obsession. I will most definitely use that excuse to buy something again, but on the whole, I've GOT to get ahold of myself, man!

In the past three years I have owned: 4 iPods (a touch, 2 nanos, and a classic), 4 tablet-type devices (an iPad, a nexus 7, a nook color, and an iPad mini), 2 ereaders (nook touch and nook touch with glowlight), 3 iPhones (3GS, 4S, and 5), and miraculously, only one computer (MacBook Pro). Of these  14 devices, I still own 6. To my tiny credit, I typically only keep one item in each category and give away or sell the other items. My iPods are the only exception here, as I have kept my nano and my classic. I reason that I NEED the classic for its capacity to hold all of my media with 160GB of storage capacity. I keep the nano because I like to use it at my cleaning job, because it's small and light and I have a little belt-holster for it. Most of the time Apple products can fetch me at least 80% of what I'll pay for the next thing, but that's still no kind of excuse for being such a greedy bastard.

At this very moment I have a pedometer listed on ebay (fitbit ultra) because selling it means I get to get the new one (fitbit flex)! And the new one will sync to my phone via bluetooth!

Let me further outline the more pornographic details of this obsession. Part of the intense infatuation with these gizmos is the amount of wooing I do in conjunction with the desire for a new device. I watch YouTube reviews of the device I covet. I read the reviews on cnet over and over until I have sections of them memorized. I walk about my daily life pretending I have the new device, imagining how awesome it will be to have it. I make pro and con lists to justify my need. I stare at images online of the device at all angles. I go to Best Buy and Target to see if I can touch the device/see it in person. It's really sick.

This expensive addiction has to stop but I cannot kid myself here: it won't stop. But perhaps I can at least slow the boiling madness to a bit more of a simmering bubble.

This post is a letter to myself, intended to help me resist the siren call of new technology by describing why I love the top 5 bits of technology I already have (and the ones I'm most likely to want to replace with the next better iteration of that thing every time there is a next better iteration of that thing) and why they're perfectly good enough to last me for years to come.

Dear Future Stephanie,

These are the top 5 perfectly functional items of technology you will be tempted to, but don't need to, replace ANYTIME SOON:

1. iPod -- Your iPod classic holds 160GB of media. You won't have 160GB of music for a very long time (only at half that now) and this device will work for at least the next 5 years, so don't even think about replacing it unless you break it beyond repair or lose it. I love my classic so much. Her name is Strict Machine. She has an inscription on the back: "Wonderful electric, cover me in white noise." She is covered by a custom skin of my mixtapes (that image I use for everything). I've mutilated her both by accident (dropping on pavement) and on purpose (trying to further customize an earlier skin with an Xacto knife left small slices in both her screen and her steel back-plate). I don't use her much in day-to-day life, but she's indispensable at parties and on road trips and anytime I want my entire music collection with me when there's no internet connection. As for my Disco Stick (iPod nano), she's lovely for cleaning, but she's only 8GB and is essentially extraneous.

Summation: You are not allowed to get a new classic unless yours is lost, stolen, or broken beyond functionality. No exceptions. When Disco Stick bites the dust, suck it up and start using Strict Machine for the same purposes. Do not replace Disco Stick. Let her die in peace.

2. iPad mini -- His name is Frank Sinatra, for the Cake song, not the singer (though the song is named for the singer, so there's that) and he's a fine tablet. His inscription says "We know of an ancient radiation, a faintly glimmering radio station." You will want the new mini when it's released this fall. You will want it soooo bad because it will probably have a Retina Display and might even come in fun colors! Heart palpitations! But remember, Frank Sinatra hasn't caused you any turmoil and you really only use him on the road and in the mornings to play Yahtzee and watch YouTube videos. You've never thought the screen resolution was crappy, so you don't need the new one.

Summation: You are not allowed to get a new tablet device until the third or fourth generation, at least. Calm down. You don't have to have all the new things. Resist.

3. MacBook Pro -- Her name is Honeycrisp and she has served me well for almost three years now. She will live for another few years, I suspect. She's only 250GB, but when I get to capacity I can always relocate my music, photos, and videos to my 500GB hard drive, so that's not a good enough excuse to replace her.

Summation: You probably won't be tempted to buy a new computer until Honeycrisp dies, so this isn't much of a risk. Just remember that Macs last 5-10 years and they cost like a thousand bucks. Don't do it until Honeycrisp becomes ridiculously sluggish.

4. iPhone -- Her name is Daughter of Avalanche and she's the most current iPhone, for the next few months anyway. She will get iOS updates for the next couple of years and she's 32GB, which is PLENTY of space for a phone. Even when your upgrade is available, really ask yourself if you neeeed to drop a couple hundred dollars on the newest phone. Yeah, you don't. Let this one live for three years...it won't kill you.

Summation: You don't get to have a new phone until at LEAST your upgrade with Verizon arrives (October 2014 probably). Apple will make you want the 5S. You will be shaking resisting it, but you must. Do this for your well-BEING, Stephanie.

5. Nook -- This ereader is fine. It holds books and has a nightlight. It works in bright sunlight, has a long battery-life, and is light. Nothing is wrong with it. Nook is getting out of the ereader biz anyway, so there probably won't be a better version of this ereader.

Summation: For this device, you really just need to let yourself keep it and use it when you want. When it dies, you may buy another on ebay or just use your mini to read with from now on. Just don't get rid of it. You prefer it to tablet-reading. It's ok to have an ereader AND a tablet. You like this device, so keep it until its demise. It'll be fun to see how long it lives.

Seriously, all of these devices have the capacity to live for YEARS, so let them. You take care of your devices and you don't like wasting things. It will be so much more gratifying replacing things because the other things are no longer functioning. You won't have to feel guilty! Imagine NOT feeling guilty for buying an electronic device...how cool will that be? Please refer to this list after every Apple announcement.

Sincerely,
Past Stephanie