The query, “Are you on WhatsApp”, may appear innocent enough, but not quite as far as I am concerned. Why so? Because, since giving up on a regular 9 to 5 job, what I have discovered to be one of the more liberating perks is not to be held slave to the electronically-inspired call of duty.
The smartphone is, to be sure, one of the great modern inventions, giving previously unimaginable new meaning to the term “social mobility”. But, as I recently replied to one who again popped the question, I refuse to let the smartphone I carry be smarter than me.
Reactions to my negative answer are fairly predictable. An incredulous “This is the 21st century, John!” is fairly common. Another: “It’s free!” All my usual protestations, of course, cut little ice.
But, I recently discovered a plausible one: “I value my privacy too much.” An old friend who juggles two smartphones (and who knows the many apps in each of them) finally nodded at least in understanding.
He expressed some horror over how those not part of his regular social media network still know what he had been up to. He figured it’s because friends of friends in his social media network shared news about him.
Also, customised advertisements popping up on the smartphone may at least be a lesser evil than the generalised ones, if you can ignore the somewhat troubling and maybe even sinister implications of what makes these possible.
My friend went further in comforting empathy. He acknowledges that he sometimes wonders if the deluge of real-time information at his finger-tips afforded by the new age of instant communication necessarily makes him wiser.
And, should all this new-fangled technology end precipitously one day in global self-destruction, my friend conceded that I will be among the lucky few like those who lived in caves who will be saved because even the latest satellite technology will be useless to trace my whereabouts.
He was, however, quick to sense he might have committed a faux pas and corrected himself by suggesting that it’s as if I would be saved by being cut adrift on an isolated island from any global mayhem.
I reassured my friend I rather liked the cave analogy better. Even the caveman in me, however, knows to employ new tools selectively to my own advantage. Thus, the smartphone in my pocket is meant only for making and taking calls, thankfully few and far in between, or for sending and receiving text messages.
The writer in me means it is more practical for me to carry a compact netbook around so I can pen my columns whenever and wherever inspiration happens to strike. With a plugged-in mobile Wi-Fi kit always at the ready, I can check on emails only as and when I choose to.
Even such limited concessions to modern technology never cease to amaze me. I started out writing a column at a time when I used to draft it out on real paper, long-hand, before setting it onto a personal computer, printing out the finished copy and finally faxing it to my editor. Used to be ideas flowed only when ink hit paper; now they do just as freely when fingers tap keyboard.
Today, I may be penning my column under a tree and emailing it to my editor, pronto! That is exactly how some of my columns have reached my editor from the caves (yes, that!) of Mulu National Park, innumerable other places in Malaysia, and such fairly remote corners of the globe as Zamboanga in Mindanao, Manado in Sulawesi, Pontianak in Kalimantan, Siem Reap in Cambodia, Accra in Ghana, Casablanca in Morocco, Port Louis in Mauritius and Kathmandu in Nepal.
That said, compromising on my own terms in the era of information technology is getting harder and may yet prove untenable in the end. Standing in line for a taxi in foreign cities, for example, has become more taxing lately because taxis are more often now being “grabbed” by those hailing them online.
Such “disruptive” technology may one day mean that we all end up shopping exclusively online. That will put an end to one of life’s simpler pleasures — window-shopping in the air-conditioned comfort of a glitzy mall.
Hotels may even become passé as travellers migrate to directly booking online homes away from home or apartments straight from owners.
Is the quality of a caveman’s life seriously disrupted if he is reduced to ordering pizza from his cave, I wonder.
John Teo is a Kuching-based journalist