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Having built up a collection of electronic books and magazines to be read, and wanting to save space in my pack on a recent hiking trip, I decided to load all of the books and magazines into my phone instead of taking paper reading material on the trip. This was fairly effective for its purpose, but left me feeling slightly ashamed when I found myself sitting outside my tent with my phone (reading), looking for all the world like someone who'd rather spend time with a phone than with the natural environment I'd come to see.
Now, what I was doing with the phone was essentially the same as what I would do with a book, and I bring books with me whenever I travel. I suppose that one might also argue that reading books in hotel rooms or camp sites is wasting time that could be better spent experiencing the locale that one has come to visit, but I find reading indispensable for passing the time on aeroplanes, trains and buses, and for relaxing at the end of the day. For that matter, I also check my e-mail and answer phone calls while travelling, albeit with greatly reduced frequency to what I normally do. So why not use the phone for the same purpose?
In my mind, at least, I guess there's a great difference in the image projected by using a mobile phone as compared to a book. Sure, I might only be reading, but with a phone I could be checking in with work or providing banal second-hand experiences to my friends — and perhaps I shortly will be if I become accustomed to using to the phone. But a book can only be read, and anyone seeing me with a book knows exactly what I must be doing.
Now, why should I care what everyone thinks I'm doing anyway? Plenty of people respond with incredulity when I say I'm planning to walk or catch a bus where my audience would take a car, but I just explain to them that it's part of the adventure. Yet in doing this I guess I am trying to project an image of someone who isn't bound up with his technological devices, and enjoys spending time without them. I wouldn't like to think that I'd be doing something so crude as trying to be popular or conventional, but I am nonetheless looking after my image.
Later on one evening, I did receive a phone call from a friend. While I was a little surprised that the phone had reception at my camp site, I thought nothing of answering it until I started thinking on this blog entry. So perhaps I am just as much at the beck and call of my devices as the next person after all, at least when I'm not concentrating on resisting them.
