It seems to be standard operating procedure: If you want to live a safe, happy and healthy life, get all the necessary apps on your phone, tablet, or whatever other digital equipment you have under your command.
The apps will remind you where you want to go and how to reach there; they will update you on how much exercise you have done and what your heart rate and other parameters are; you will get those little beeps to tell you it’s time to do this or that … what could be easier for the average Joe/Jane/Jayant/Jaya?
But — if you are not the average Joe/Jane …, if you’re not busy listening-talking-clicking-tapping on some device or the other as you walk-drive-fly-sit in any public space or even at a social gathering … then you’re in trouble.
Perhaps you actually believe that your mental arithmetic should serve you well enough to calculate how much you have walked in a day and whether your 10,000 steps are done; you honestly think that you ought to remember which pills to pop before and after your meals to make sure your blood pressure, blood sugar, blood clotting rate and various other real or imaginary ailments are kept at bay; maybe you are spot on with your dates and call up your friends and family for their birthdays and anniversaries without reminders popping up on your phone, on Facebook or anywhere else; you even drink water when you’re thirsty and eat when you’re hungry without consulting any modern device designed to remind you when to down your next “shot” of water or educate you about the caloric value of what you consume …
If you do all that and you don’t need apps for them — are you app-solutely sure you ought to be in the modern world? Shouldn’t you just hop into a time machine and get back to that past you so rigidly cling to?
Until just about a couple of decades ago, I thought I was moving with the times pretty well. I somehow got comfortable with turning on and turning off a computer — and even got to that happy (and for me, exalted) state where I used it on a daily basis. I learnt words like “Google” and spouted it blithely as various parts of speech: noun, verb, adjective … and I thought I was all set for the future.
I didn’t expect the future to come hurtling towards me on a head-on collision course, at a pace I cannot keep up with, cannot handle and am definitely not “appy” with.
“Just download the app — it’s so easy,” I’m assured by everyone around as they click and swipe and do a dozen different things at one time. From where I stand, these confident “app-liers” appear to have not yet lost their milk teeth, so naturally I’m a bit reluctant to take their word for it when at the flick of a finger they can order food from wherever they want in the city, they can buy clothes and books, they can de-clutter their homes (a sore necessity for me, but I cannot even imagine what will happen to that gadget when I enter the purchase date for some of the stuff I cling to), sell their unused belongings and vehicles and even homes; they can update themselves on tickets and bookings for all manner of things that require tickets and bookings … and all I have done in the meanwhile is stare in amazement.
At a loss.
All thumbs when they try to teach me what to do.
And not at all “appy” about my lack of prowess with the dozen or more apps I seem to now need to go from one day to the next.
