Is there an app for life?

I have owned a whopping number of three different models of cell phones in my life. The one I have had for the past four years is a flip phone, and it works just fine. How it works just fine is that the phone makes phonecalls and sends and receives text messages. Have I ever wanted my phone to do more? Absolutely not, because I don't have the kind of desire for Internet access on my phone. I spend enough of my life on the Internet, so why should I spend all of my life on it?

I'd like to restate a comment I left on Donna's blog on this topic:

I would say that having a cell phone is a great safety net, but don't let it become your life. Texting is a great option to have. I might not like texting, but I have friends who are easier to contact through text rather than calling them.

All this said, all those bells and whistles with camera phones, 3G connections, etc. are, in my opinion, not necessary. There might be an app for anything, as the ad goes, but it's no replacement for human life and communicating with humans.

In my day-to-day life, when I'm not at work, my cell number is the only way people can call me. Thankfully, I have not become an impatient robot that makes phone calls all the time about being there in five minutes. If I'm lost or if a friend or loved one is running late, there's the exception.

I hope I'm not sounding like Tyler Durden here, but your basic cell phone is important to have. Yet I can't forget the fact that I went twenty-plus years without a cell phone and survived, got to places on time, and met up with friends on time. I still keep that in mind when I carry my cell phone around.

A big part of my view on this comes from a conversation I had with a friend of mine who has an insane amount of texts every month as well as Internet access. Basically, ever since he's had this access, he can't think of his life without it. Well, I prefer to not become that addicted. As a matter of fact, I have never gone over in monthly minutes or texts since I've had my own calling plan. I know I'm throwing away some money each month that way, but I'd like to keep a cushion just in case I were to ever really need all those monthly minutes in a month.

I think this boils down to an issue of want versus need. Do I need to know which bands Franz Nicolay played in before he joined the Hold Steady when I'm at brunch? No, that can wait for when I get home and log onto my computer. I just don't need to know everything right now and in the moment. I like to think about things and follow-up on them when I get the chance.

In the case of e-mail, I don't receive that much in the first place, so why should I be impatient about not receiving an e-mail sent to me while I was taking a nap? The same with Facebook. There's a time and place to receive information, and I just prefer to spend some time away from computers and the Internet in hopes of not becoming a Cylon hybrid.