Don't call me, I'll call you ...

Sometime later this month ... or perhaps it might be next month, because I'll certainlyﾊbe procrastinatingﾊabout this as much as I can, I'll be finallyﾊbiting the bulletﾊand getting a cell phone.

It won't be all that difficult to do I suppose; there is a phone shop on every second corner these days. I'll get some advice from my staff about which ofﾊthe competing carriersﾊmight be the 'best' one, because there is no way that I can work my way through one of those multi-pageﾊcontractsﾊin minuscule printﾊin Japanese on my own, although I suppose none of the people I ask will have ever read through one either, so it will pretty much beﾊa tossupﾊfor the choice.

For the phone itself, it'll be an iPhone of course. I have been an Apple customer since before some of my staff members were born, and have (almost) always found the products a pleasure to own and use.

But.

A minute ago I mentioned procrastinating, and I do have to say that I really don't want to be doing this. I know ... I know ... the new smartphones areﾊsoﾊconvenient! Having instantﾊaccessﾊto all sorts of information from anywhere, and always being in touch with one's co-workers and friends, are clearly 'good' things; with thatﾊI have no argument.

But when I look around me on the train these days,ﾊeveryﾊtime I ride the train, you know without me having to tell you, what I see there. On any given bench of seven people,ﾊsevenﾊof themﾊhave their nose buried inﾊtheir phone! I can't tell what most of them are doing, but I certainly can with the two who sit on each side of me. Messaging, or Candy Crush.

Part of me says "Well,ﾊso what? A few years back those people would have been sitting thereﾊblankly, just waiting for their station. What's wrong with doing somethingﾊto occupy the time?" And the simple answer is that there is nothing wrong with this at all, but I can't help but feel that we are in the process of running a vast experiment atﾊmodifyingﾊhuman behaviour. Always connected; alwaysﾊstimulated; never remaining on one thought for more than a minute or so. What are we doing to ourselves?

I myself am of course not immune to this, and even with the fairly limited number of hours per day that I use my desktop computer have felt the same thing happening to me. Check this web page, answer that email, follow that link ... Luckily for me my woodblock printmaking work is about as 'analog' as you can get, so - at least on workbench days - I am forced to remainﾊfirmlyﾊrootedﾊin the real world, doing things that require my concentration for hours at a time.

And that brings me to a point that you must be thinking by now, "If Dave is so uncomfortable with the idea of having a cell phone, then why is he going to get one?"

The long answer will have to wait for another story (or stories, as we will surely see) but for now, I can simply mention that our Mokuhankan printmaking venture is about to takeﾊa pretty major step forward, one that will require me to spend a great deal of time away from my benches. As Iﾊzip back and forthﾊhere and there around Tokyo - as is the case this afternoon on Mokuhankan business as I sit here on the train writing this story! - it will be important that I be 'in touch' with the staff.

That's life these days for a business manager, and if I want to do that job properly, I'll need the proper tools.

But I tell you, if you ever catch me with Candy Crush, then you'll know it's all over with me; take meﾊout behind the barnﾊand ... well, you know what to do!

Story #437, May 11, 2014