Is This a True Necessity?

While I was out to lunch with my brother and dad today, I noticed my dad checked his email, updated his business schedule, and let my brother play a game of solitaire all on his phone. I started to think whether or not the ability to do all of this and more on a phone is a good thing. I’m sure the ability to check your email has made life easier for people, but is it really a necessity? I remember when my mom got a new phone over the summer; I had to teach her how to just find the phone book because there were so many other applications. It seems like this ‘advancement’ has just made our life more complicated. I thought that Thoreau said it well, “Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand” (Thoreau 73). I thought that this was the problem with new phones; they can do a hundred different things when all you need them to do it two or three. I figured I wasn’t the only one who had noticed this, so I looked it up on the internet and found an interesting article. The writer agreed with me, and even connected the complicating phones to new calculators that are out. Concerning a calculator, she asked an interesting question, “how did we manage to take the same classes in school without all this technology?” I think the fact that 25 years ago, students were able to learn the same thing that we learn today even though we have these $150 calculators proves that maybe they aren’t progress. I mean we had to spend the first week of school learning how to use the new, ‘improved’ calculators. Is that really worth it? Although I have to admit these new phones and calculators have at times made my life easier, overall, they just complicate our lives.