Antique & Classic Cars Blog

It’s no news flash that cell phones cause accidents. Why? Because they’re distracting. In fact, there even more distracting than they need to be–a lot more.

By 2009 most of us have had a few cell phones. While this device, like virtually all modern technology, is pitched as a time saver, a life simplifier, the truth of those descriptions curiously diminishes over time. Computer software follows the same path.

How? Pointless complification (the process of making something more complicated under the pretense of making it easier to use). Word processing software took this path in the 1990s. Every time you learned how to use one program, its manufacturer would release some new version. The original one had 10 features you never used; the new version had 50. And so here you are at your job trying to grow better and more efficient at it, yet your employer keeps handing you software every six months that makes you relearn everything you knew how to do, wading through new menus and features you didn’t use before and that now take even more time and effort to get out of the way–features that would start changing the capitalization or spelling of words on you or throwing in formatting you didn’t want or need. So you’d have to learn how to undo these invasive time-wasters.

Cell phones now do the same thing. Mine claimed freedom last week, leaping from its belt hook as I ran for the bus and disappearing forever into an untraceable lost-and-found, under a car tire or into someone else’s care until they realized I’d canceled the service and chucked it.

The new one looks nice but is twice as hard to use. Like the word-processing software of old, it now does uncountable things I don’t want or need. It’s a phone. The obvious things I want from it are a phone book to save numbers, a ringtones menu so I can set it to one I can stand, and immediate access to ringer volume and vibrate as to hear it or not annoy others, as necessary, and for libraries or movies when it needs to make no sound at all.

These functions are buried beneath uncountable–unfathomable–others. Who would have thought 20 years ago that a time would come when you’d need an instruction manual to figure out your telephone? It’s de-progress, a great leap forward into the past.

And lots of people are trying to handle it from the driver’s seat. No wonder accidents rise. You’re trying to make a quick call from a “modern convenience” but some dope has made your telephone more complicated than your taxes.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 23rd, 2009 at 7:36 am and is filed under Car stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.