(I had to write something for class...here is what came out. Thoughts?)

If there is any one piece of technology that I find myself using every day, that would be the cell phone, today’s version of yesterday’s telephone. And while I have from time to time wondered why I, and this society I am a part of, use it so often, I have never really dug deeply into the reasons or actual details. I guess I should start with looking at the cell phone and its place in my daily life, and since this week I have to discuss my phone and me, here it is, a day in the life:

Every morning I wake up to whichever new ringtone I have downloaded and currently set as my alarm clock. Being the growing college student that I am, I need all the sleep I can get (because even though I still need the six to eight hours every night, I make the most of my mornings…asleep. How else am I going to stay up late and exercise my parental free no bedtime hours?) and unless it is Sunday, I will not wake up on my own when I need to. Or maybe it’s that I know that my phone is going to wake me up (phone charged and volume loud), and so I can sleep with the full knowledge that someone (Mommy or Daddy) or something (my dear old phone) will get me up and to school on time.

Depending on what day of the week it is, my cell phone use varies. If I am getting to work, well I get to sleep in a few extra hours (more time to do stuff at 2 am!) and wake up to the more gentle tones of Yann Tiersen’s compositions for a film (not Amélie, sadly). If I am going to school (must go to bed before the next day starts), then I get shocked out of bed by a louder electronic tune of one of Phoenix’s chart-topping singles (remixed by someone else).

During school, my contact with my phone serves most importantly as a time-keeping device. I check to see how many minutes of class have passed, how many minutes of lecture there are left, and how long it is until I can finally go back to my apartment at the end of the day for the much longed-for meal and central heating. During work, my trusty little phone sits in my back pocket all day watching me make sandwiches on short-order and run deliveries when staff is short and orders are many. For the most part, my phone is only necessary to help me call customers to say Hey, I’m on my way or Come down and get your food, and always Hello? Delivery! The kitchen I work in has a clock; the radio station playing music overhead lets me know the time, and temperature (if only my phone could do that). So on these days, handy-dandy cell phone is really only an insurance policy; there to make sure I get food fast to the wonderful and hungry college students (a whole other matter entirely).

So far, my phone looks pretty useless; it almost seems like I do without it (well, except for the alarm clock, that’s mighty importante). It is not until the end of the day, when my shift is over, when class is done, that I have finished my homework (and even then sometimes before that), I actually use my phone for the purpose it was intended. The phone call. And always, long-distance. I guess that is where having a cell phone, or a telephone, really helps (because try as I might, most people don’t really like letter writing, and not nearly as much as I do…for a twenty year old, I sound like an old woman from a bygone era…). Anyhow, a big part of my nighttime hours (after the homework, the eating, the cleaning up of the eating, and catching up on my online shows, TV shows, email, Facebook, and blogs) is calling people back at home. Well, namely two people very near and dear to me: the boyfriend and my mother. Sometimes Dad, the younger brother, and the little sister. Maybe even the dogs. It’s hard, not to mention expensive, to have people in my life back on the West coast. A phone call means a lot, but admittedly it isn’t the same. Still, it helps a lot. Relationships cannot really function on silences.

Now that I have taken a look at my cell phone’s place in my life, what does it all really mean? I am not entirely sure, other than that I am a product of the times I live in, but I do know this, the machine does not control me; I use it. Yes, technology is at every left, right, up, and down we look, but really, it is us that use it, make it, assign its place and purpose in our lives. My cell phone did not include a section in the user’s manual on how I should keep my cell phone in my pocket as a chronological companion. Yes, my phone was marketed to me with all these features and applications, but someone, someone human, thought of it, be it an account executive at an ad agency or some person fiddling around with the prototype. I think it’s a little ridiculous when people attribute all the ills and faults of people to technology; it’s just a machine. Something Fischer stated in his first chapter really resonated with me and my views on technology; “the telephone did not radically alter American ways of life; rather, Americans used it to more vigorously pursue their characteristic ways of life” (Fischer 5). And it is indeed true; we have incorporated the cell phone into our daily lives and made it an essential part just like breakfast or shaking hands. Instead of seeing technology as the cold and sterile machine that controls us, perhaps we would be better off viewing these “machines” as products of our humanity and extensions of us; technology is merely another opportunity in which we can act out being human.