I love my iPhone, but apparently have almost no use for it. This is not a competition, just an observation. I see I’m using my motorcycle a lot more than my iPhone. Hmm.
See image below. Wouldn’t it be cool if the instrument panels on motorcycles automatically provided a weekly summary like this? Many years ago there was a popular bumper sticker that read: “Have you hugged your motorcycle today?” Hard to believe, but true.
Personal sidebar: This is also an example of my own youthful hubris. My late father was a hard-working businessman who had a degree in accounting. He worked with numbers the old-fashioned way, longhand, on pages and pages of yellow legal pads, but at some point during his sixties, he added a then-new pocket-size Texas Instruments calculator to his analog paper-pencil-pen tools. He stubbornly never wanted to go further and learn how to use a personal computer, even though they were increasingly everywhere around him. Today, when I look at this screenshot my father stares back. I don’t use social media or play video games. Partly no interest. Partly near the autistic spectrum (little social interest). I became my dad. Crap. Sigh.
Audio Version (2:08), reader: Mr. Subjective
I remember those “HAVE YOU HUGGED YOUR MOTORCYCLE TODAY?” stickers, because I used to know the guy who created and marketed them. He had posters too, featuring his long-haired, bearded self hugging an old Indian (motorcycle). If I recall correctly, he hoped to take the profits from the stickers and posters, add some investor money, and develop a revolutionary trailer for hauling your motorcycle around. Alas, far as I know the company went under before ever marketing the trailer. Probably because of people like me, who only put their bikes on a trailer if they’re broken beyond roadside repair.
I find it a bit ironic that I spent some of my early career helping to take cellular technology from the lab to the real world, yet I didn’t get a cell phone myself until they’d been around for almost twenty years. Didn’t get a smartphone until they put some rudimentary GPS apps on them. Still don’t have any sociable media apps or games, though I do have a fairly recent “pro” model iPhone—primarily for the three-lens camera, which comes very close to replicating what my bulky and delicate DSLR can do in a tiny fraction of the space. Plus, it holds music, runs my library’s e-book reader, and even makes calls and texts and emails!
Using your motorcycle more than the iphone seems like a great problem to have!
FWIW, I got rid of all the social media apps and games from my phone. Still use it as a phone to call and text, and it’s convenient to have the camera as well (remember when everyone thought THAT was a stupid idea?). Being from the days of paper maps and even in the Army using a “slugger” that would only spit out a ten-digit grid coordinate, can’t argue that Gewgle Maps, with the traffic function, are one of the best safety developments in recent memory. Other than those, I’m really learning to like life without constantly staring at that stupid little screen (I’m typing this from work on a great big screen – sigh….)
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