CRACKberry

One day last week I arrived at work and rode the elevator up to my department with 6-7 other people. All of these people, including myself, were furiously typing away emails and text messages on their blackberries. The only sounds in that little box that carried all of us strangers to our respective floors was the sound of mini keys clicking on tiny blackberry keyboards.

I found myself wondering for the next couple days why we are so dependent on technology, and furthermore why is it necessary for us to always have the LATEST technology IMMEDIATELY? My younger brother went out a couple days ago and bought the iPad. When he came home all proud of himself for having called every Apple store within driving distance of our house until he found a store that had the iPad in stock (he did this for about a week - calling every hour on the hour) I didn't really understand why he needed it. He already has a MacBook and a MacBook Pro (one is for personal use the other for/from his job) and I just couldn't comprehend why on earth he needed a THIRD laptop. After playing with the iPad a little bit, I get it, it's cool...but I still don't understand the intense craze surrounding it.

You see - I've had the same computer for the past 2 years and the same shitty, old, outdated blackberry for the past 20 months. Recently, a whole slew of my friends got blackberries and decided to add me on bbm and have been trying to send me picture messages which they can't do because my "old" blackberry doesn't recieve picture messages. To which they all laughed and said "LOL what kind of phone doesn't recieve picture messages? How do you tweet and post funny pictures of things you see walking around the city on facebook if your phone doesn't have a camera?" Um. I don't. And I kinda like it that way. I'm so sick of nearly running into people in Times Square because they are video taping the jumbo screens on their iPhones. Does our generation even remember how to see things with our own naked eyes, or must we view the world through the lens of our camera phone?

My contract with my cell phone provider expires in a few months and I was temporarily toying with the idea of getting the new iPhone before I realized how much I would hate myself for doing something like that. When I first got my blackberry I was so excited to have a smartphone. Now I hate the damn thing. I hate that I get emails all the time. I hate how slow it runs because its trying to do 50 things at once and then it crashes on me saying "duhh sorrrryyy" (no it doesn't really say that, that's just the voice I've given my phone in my own head) and lands up doing none of those 50 things. I hate how the battery dies after 8 hours of use because its just too overwhelmed. But most of all, I hate that I have become associated with it as a 'blackberry person'. What does that even mean? Someone said that to me the other day "Oh...you're a blackberry person, never mind" and I wasn't really sure how to take it. Is that a bad thing? Is that a good thing? Is that some new disease that your smart phone passes through your ear while your on the phone (gross)? I mean, last time I checked, I was just a person - defined by my morals and beliefs and not by the type of phone I use..... but the last time I checked was also a while ago, so maybe things have changed....