Our 'life without a cellphone experiment' kicked up a lot of interest from readers (not least the estimable beer sipping, budgie loving John Brownlee of BoingBoing Gadgets, who openly sneers at my almost-retro Sony Ericsson P900).
While my own experiment failed miserably (Brownlee: "Charlie Sorrel abandoned his quest to go a week without a cellphone within mere hours") it's worth looking at a few of the schemes you proposed, beginning with this quite excellent hack from regular Gadget Lab correspondent Andrea Biasi:
>I’ve read some time ago about an Android application which used geographical data of the GPS to use different settings for different location. I didn’t inquire too much because I thought it was something like the supposed Vista feature which could recognize the “environment” and set itself differently depending on it.
>But then came your post. And my idea. What about tweaking the aforementioned application to set a filtering list for your cellphone based on actual location. When I’m at work I don’t want mum to call me. Or when I’m at the pub I don’t want my boss to. And so on. I don’t have any idea if this feature is contained in the application I’m talking about. But the fact is that I don’t have any skill to implement such a thing and I don’t know how to suggest someone to do it. That is why I’m writing you to help me with my little cause: to create a virtual secretary who knows to whom I want to talk base on the location I’m in. Please spread the word. Life could be better.
This is great, and Andrea's "virtual secretary" name fits it perfectly. Surely the point of technology is to make things easier for the user, and Android, with its open operating system, would surely be able to handle such a thing.
Others questioned my resolve. Regarding my need to use a phone as a doorbell, here's reader "Frill":
And this comment from Anonymous123:
Both fair points, although this line of argument leads quickly to living in a cave and killing your own dinner. The point here is that it is possible to love technology and at the same time to despair at its social effects.
Much better were the accounts from readers who have successfully kicked the mobile habit. Bob, in the UK, has a home internet account from BT which gives him access to country-wide hotspots. He also uses the Fon service to get online, with the result that he can get his iPod Touch connected almost anywhere. This sounds like the perfect solution.
GreatWhiteNorth almost got killed thanks to his Blackberry, and gave it up soon after:
What surprised me was how many of you already get by just fine without a ubiquitous connection. The general vibe in the comments on both posts was that of frustration at the intrusive nature of a mobile. Sure, you can ignore the calls, but the constant beeping is the sonic equivalent of the flashing blue lights on every home gadget: It is not just a form of pollution but, for many, a cause of anxiety.
To finish, a story of such astonishing backward thinking that we can only admire the dusty old minds that came up with it. From "sys admin":
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