I want my phone to be a washing machine

There was a time when we, and by we I mean us human beings, were living on this lovely round planet without the aid of any technology. That was a long time ago. Was that a better time? Probably not. Technology has improved our lives immensely and we should be grateful and also proud of what we developed during the centuries. What we shouldn't be proud of though, is the current state of a subset of those technologies, particularly phones.

Phones have become this ubiquitous object that does way too many things and creates more problems that it solves. That's not the case for the majority of technologies you use on a daily basis.

Think for a moment at your washing machine. What model of washing machine do you have? When did you buy it? What brand it is? I couldn't answer any of these questions about my washing machine because, honestly, I don't care. I know it's there, I know it solves a problem and it frees me from having to wash clothes by hand and that's it. That's what technology is supposed to do. Every piece of technology is supposed to make our lives simpler and in some way better.

Decades ago the phone was a washing machine. It wasn't this omnipresent item thats's always with you. It was an object in your home attached to a cable coming out from your wall. And back then the phone was essentially a single purpose item: you were able to make and receive phone calls with it. That's it.

Now? God knows what a phone is today. Mine doesn't even receive phone calls. Is it a digital camera? Sometimes. Is it a voice recorder? Occasionally. Is it a book? It could be, yeah. But primarily it's a gateway to the internet.

That's a good and a bad thing at the same time. It's slowly changing the way we interact with each other in ways that I think are not healthy.

I want my phone to go back to being a washing machine. I should probably tie a string to it and attach it to the wall. Maybe that will help.