A smartphone in hand embodies communication in the digital age. You no longer have to schedule your time to get information. With Internet access on your smartphone, you can send data (a message, a picture, a graphic, music) and you can attach rich data, which you have created or captured, to those communications. You may choose to access the data sent to you at your convenience. The smartphone gives you options and you can choose to use it to manage your life efficiently. However, most people don’t do that.
Most active smartphone users choose to interrupt when the phone tells them new data has arrived. Especially when contacting a friend who made a comment, started a new chat thread, attached a funny joke or picture, or hinted at a gossip update, most smartphone users stop a conversation with a real person to interact with your smartphone. People have gotten into moving traffic while concentrating on trivia for someone to feel on their smartphone. The smartphone has become the industry’s favorite place to give you unlimited options on how to communicate.
Tell your life story to family, friends, and strangers on Facebook. Use Snapchat if you don’t want your mom to see the last YouTube video you posted. Organize your photos on a Pinterest board. Tweet a comment on Twitter. Most smartphone users actively use four or more applications (apps) on their smartphones that will allow them to participate in the social networking sites where their friends hang out. If Paul Revere had a smartphone, we would have learned in school about Paul Revere’s Google, post and tweet because he wouldn’t have had to travel anywhere. The Smartphone, a paradigm shift in communication, can subsume your life.
A communication tool should improve, not become, your life. During the age of sail, ships transmitted written communications by sailing across large bodies of water. A ship’s captain can communicate from the high seas (or with another ship) using a flag semaphore to shorten the time needed to deliver a written message. Wireless telegraphy, applied at the end of the 19th century, also changed the paradigm of communication. With it, the ship could deliver a communication without sailing at all. Imagine the time, cost and effort you saved. Look at your smartphone that way too. Use your smartphone as intended to get more value from your everyday life. #label1writer
