E-mail, cell phones and gadgets, oh my

About a month ago, I made a decision. A huge one, actually, much more important than the… About a month ago, I made a decision. A huge one, actually, much more important than the typical mundane debates that I frequently have about which shoes to wear or what personal experience to pirate for a column idea. I decided to get a cell phone. Well, I didn’t really decide, I just agreed with my girlfriend’s logical argument that if she was getting one, I should get one, since it would be cheaper for the both of us. Still, that’s sort of like a decision, right? Right.

So now I’ve got a cell phone, which to the average reader probably sounds as revolutionary as “I have emotions,” or “I do not possess gills; thus I cannot breathe underwater.” However, despite your sniggering asides, this is a pretty big deal for Kevin.

My whole life I’ve been averse to technology. Not in a crazy way, mind you. I’ve embraced advancements as diverse as organ transplants, cloning and Hot Pockets with open arms, but I have viewed others – Excel, E-Z Pass, Blackberry – with disdain. I always felt like technology was sort of, well, silly.

I’m not sure why. Maybe it was that I grew up before everybody had a home computer, maybe I romanticized the idea of being a Luddite, maybe I always thought that the word Luddite was really keen: Any of these possibilities could be true. The end result, however, was always the same; I was scared of technology.

I always tried to play the card that I didn’t need to deal with weird electronic stuff because it wasn’t important to me or my lifestyle, but in actuality I was terrified of stuff like that. I mean, I could operate a microwave with alacrity – except for that time I somehow burned a piece of pizza so badly it resembled carbon paper – but computers totally freaked me out. Honestly, I was afraid of them the way the United States is terrified of Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

They – meaning computers, not Iranian nuclear technicians – seemed so foreign to the idea I always had of me. I viewed myself as a goofy, fun-loving guy who enjoyed books. Computers seemed businesslike and efficient. I hated, and still hate, efficiency. Who cares if the trains run on time? Man, Mussolini made the trains run on time. It’s not as if that made everybody forgive him for his rocking of fascism. Efficiency, for me, is way too heavily weighted as something capable of absolving sins of mediocrity. Besides, what’s so bad about a little chaos?

So, that was part of my problem with computers. The other part was that I didn’t know how to make them work. They confused me, and in that confusion they intimidated me, kind of in the way that someone talking smack to you in a foreign language would really freak you out. You know they’re saying something about you, you know it’s something bad, but you can’t figure it out. Isn’t that the worst? I mean, it’s never happened to me, but if it did I would be extremely worried.

But what do computers have to do with cell phones, you ask? Good question! In the summer of 1996, I was so into being anti-technology that I argued the Internet would one day be discussed in the same manner as CB radio. In my defense, I was ripping off that comment from an editorial someone wrote in Newsweek. However, I still sounded like an idiot.

I also started to realize that without technical skills the best job I would be able to get as I aged would be in the logging business, or maybe something involving bounty hunting.

So, I had my Road to Damascus moment, and I took technology into my heart, all technology save cell phones. Why? The main reason has to do with my man Soren Kierkegaard and his theory of the subjective leap. Now, his idea is kind of complicated, but I did take an intro class in existentialism at a community college, so I think I understand it pretty well.

To sum up his idea, by believing in something that can’t be proven, a person sort of proves his subjectivity as a person, and his individuality as well. For Kierkegaard, Christianity was the leap. For me, it was not having a cell phone.

Now, however, I have a cell phone. I gave in to common sense and convenience and threw my existentialist past behind me. I’m embracing the world and the future. I’m shaking off the past and the Dutch philosophers. I’m going up to the top. And I’m going to start text messaging obsessively in class, because I can. Let’s hear it for progress!

Kevin knows how to use a computer. E-mail him at kjs34@pitt.edu.