Lamentations of a wired life

This weekend I did something that I never in my entire life thought I’d ever do: I bought a smartphone.

If you don’t have one, here’s a quick primer: A smartphone is basically any wireless phone that also offers non-telecommunication tools like messaging, e-mail, calendar, task lists, Web browser and even office productivity software for word processing and presentation programs. Examples include any device by Blackberry and Palm, the Apple iPhone and the new Google G1.

If you own a business like I do or are in some high-level management position, or if you’re just a gadget freak with a really complicated life, you probably already own one. Those of you who don’t, consider yourself lucky.

I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with cell phones. I rarely keep mine on, as I suck at multitasking and prefer to work without interruption. I often forget to bring it with me when I go out, and even occasionally lose it around the house. (And it’s not even a big house.) Yet this weekend, I decided to take the plunge and upgrade with a new company, bite the bullet and nab one of the more inexpensive, but still quite robust, smartphones on the market.

Now I’m totally in love.

Still, it’s a relationship rife with complexity and unease. Ironically, at the same time that I was working out my new wireless contract and picking out my phone, the New York Times printed an article on its Web site that described the inevitable “dread” that Barack Obama will experience once he is asked to surrender his most prized possession: his ubiquitous Blackberry.

According to the article, custom and law require that the American president be unencumbered by electronic devices that might compromise security, including even basic cell phones. Never mind that the ultra-efficient and supremely organized Mr. Obama relies heavily on his Blackberry to not only keep his professional and personal lives in order, but to also communicate with his closest friends and family at a time when intimate friendships have become more difficult to maintain.

The president of the United States, however, has people to handle his e-mail and documents for him. They do not want the leader of the free world to spend his time “reading blogs and news updates all day long.”

Elsewhere, I read in an older article in Time magazine that Suze Orman, the personal finance guru, never keeps her cell phone on. “You can’t call me, I can only call you.”

This is a woman who juggles her own TV show on CNBC with frequent guest appearances on other shows, including “Oprah;” is the author of a number of best-selling books; and writes columns for, among other publications, “O, the Oprah Magazine.” Despite what I imagine to be a pretty brutal schedule, she apparently manages to survive without feeling the need to be “wired” all the time.

So how is it that lesser mortals like myself and many others — you know who you are — somehow feel that we couldn’t possibly function without these “smartphones?” I’m by no means a Luddite — I remember getting my first Internet access account in college sometime in 1993 and immediately devoting the next year of my life to the world within my computer — but I wonder whether my life is really so complicated that it requires that I possess a small electronic device with more processing power than my trusty 1993 Packard Bell monochrome laptop ever had. I’m not running even a small country, much less a large one, and yet somehow I feel that my life would be a total disaster if I didn’t have one of these babies constantly at hand.

I daresay that most of the people I know who carry a smartphone don’t have the fate of the world or even of an entire company in their hands either. I suspect that, behind closed doors, they — as I do — spend an inordinate amount of time on their smartphones Tweeting what they had for breakfast. (Go ahead, Google it. I promise it’s not a dirty word.)

I fear that I may become one of those people with an overinflated sense of self-importance as a result of merely having that gadget in my hands, i.e., “Look, I have a smartphone, therefore I’m a smart AND busy person. Prepare to be impressed!” Or perhaps even worse: someone who prefers communicating with friends and family via text messages and e-mail rather than over coffee and drinks.

Indeed, my husband and I sat on the couch on Saturday night and texted ... each other.

I’ll keep it for now, though. I love not needing my heavy day planner anymore, and I still hold out the hope that this little toy will keep its promise to make my life easier and simpler. In the meantime, I still turn off the phone function most of the time. I haven’t totally drunk the Kool-Aid. Not yet anyway.

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Marjorie R. Asturias is a freelance writer and weekly FP columnist living in Grand Junction. Reach her at marjorie.asturias@gmail.com.