I try to keep my geezerhood in check, but once in a while I see something that makes me channel my inner Andy Rooney, and this is one of those things: an article about some new apps that can “make your smartphone into a walkie-talkie.”
PLEASE tell me I’m not the only one confounded here. A phone is by definition a thing that enables “talkie.” So why in the nine circles of hell do you need something for “voice-texting” too? Have we totally lost the ability to talk on the phone? What will happen to Bob Newhart (geezer alert part 2)?
According to David Pogue of the Times, these apps work like so:
You open the app, tap someone’s name, hold down the big Talk button and speak. A second after you start talking — yes, even before you’re finished — your voice bursts to life, extremely clearly, on your friend’s phone, wherever it may be in the world.
Just what we need: a gadget that amplifies and broadcasts our newfound lack of privacy, decorum, and common sense. Say you’re walking to happy hour with your colleague, Melanie, and your other colleague who’s already into his second pitcher fires up his Zello, and your phone, completely unbidden, blares “Hey didja see Melanie’s new hairdo? It looks like a squirrel’s nest!” Or you’re on the train and some clown Voxers you with “I just heard there’s a bomb on the subway!” After the whole car jumps up screaming and nearly tears the doors off at the next station, you get another voice-text; “Oh hey, I guess that story was from last week. Never mind.”
I’m about ready to go back to tin-can phones and quill pens. BTW, I still have somewhere the pen I got when we first learned to write in Miss Rumbles’ (her real name) third grade class in Kalamazoo (real name again). Of course I still can’t make a “5” worth a diggity darn.