State Law

My Smartphone Problem

By Ryan

I have a stupid cell phone. All it does is make calls, text (no fancy keyboard) and provides me with some sort of limited internet which isn’t worth the cost.

Truth be told, I don’t use my cell phone that much.

Sure it’s useful when I need it but if I think about it, I don’t need it that often.

Recently I went to dinner with a friend. We were discussing cell phones (he has a blackberry). He says to me “you’re the only lawyer I know without one.” Which is kinda sorta true.

I’m no technophobe or anything. My problem is that I’m too plugged in. I have this blog, two email accounts, twitter, a Red Sox message board, and several hundred friends on facebook and a LinkedIn account to boot.

Mike from The Truth About Mike writes that the iPhone changes lives. I believe him and therein lies my problem.

In the history of humankind, the iPhone is the coolest thing ever.

This past Christmas, I flirted with the iPhone and wound up taking home its slightly less attractive sister: the iPod touch. I think the iPod touch is the second coolest thing ever invented. The device is amazing.

I have to admit though that I put one foot in the water by purchasing the iPod Touch. I wanted remote internet access. The iPod Touch allows that anywhere there is wifi. It could be free wifi like at Staples or Panera or any unsecured network within a few hundred feet.

But the iPod Touch doesn’t let me get my email everywhere. I think it would be cool to get the interweb everywhere.  That thought makes me a brat. I don’t need the internet everywhere.

One of the reasons that I got the Touch was that I didn’t want to be found everywhere. I wanted to enjoy the baseball game and not tweet about how I’m at Fenway Park. No one needs to update his or her facebook status everytime they go somewhere new. I am smart enough to realize that the iPhone would separate me from things and people that I love and I wasn’t ready to go there.

I realize that cell phones as we know them or as I have are about to be obsolete. The iPhone blows the socks off of everything else and things are only going to get better from here on out. 

Sometimes there’s a voice in my head that is so crazy it tells me “a smartphone will make me a better lawyer.” But that’s nonsense.  No one needs one. Most of my clients’ problems can wait for me to walk the dog, go out with friends, or watch a ball game. I make myself very accessible to my clients and promptly answer their calls and return emails but I like a boundary. Moreover, I need a boundary.

I need to be away from the internet. It’s good to be missed and miss.

A smartphone, be it an iPhone or a Blackberry both opens and shuts doors in life. I know I’ll cave and get one. 

For now, and by now, I mean this second, I think my life is better with my plain, nearly 2 year old, cell phone.

Full post as published by A Connecticut Law Blog on January 14, 2009 (boomark / email).