Function Creep: The weeds of the Great Tech Revolution!!!
Just the other day as I was driving to work I got a phone call from cell phone provider. The girl on the other end was cheery and polite and full of well whatever cheery and polite telephone sales girls are full of and she proceede to question me about my service and my product satisfaction. To which I told her that I was generally happy with my service then the phone went dead. A dropped call. So I figured she’d move on and that would be that, but to my amazement she called back.
I was shocked and she said something must of happened to the phone and I said yes something did happen; we experienced what we on the street call a “dropped call.” To which from which she giggled one of those cheery and polite telephone sales girls giggles and proceeded to inform of a new phone that was almost guaranteed to almost never drop a call. “See” she continued “with our new”, and this is where I started to pay more attention to traffic then to her because I know she’s cheery and polite but there is only so much I can take. At the end of her long pre-rehearsed monlogue speech she wanted me to buy either of two phones, one slightly more than the other. The only difference is in the functions.
Now I’ve seen blackberries and PDA’s and phones with PDA’s and PDA’a that are actually phones and I kinda got to tell you all you really need is to make a phone call. So for me this is something I value over alot of things. The ability to make a phone call and reach the other person on their phone. Like this time several years back I traveled from my home all the way to the Czech Republic with the World Bank, at their annual meeting where all the financial institutions come together in the spirit of goodwill and harmony to set the interest rates for the world’s needy. I got a phone call on my cell phone that I forgot to turn off while I was traveling and while I was desperately trying to shake my jet lag. As you would expect I answered the phone without thinking and it was my girlfriend at the time. She was mad because I was gone for over 24 hours and had not bothered to call her. Then she preceeded to give me “the silent treatment” for five minutes at $5 per minute. Would you think then could I get a dropped call, no… Nope all the bars loaded in full network harmony. And some time later I got the phone bill to prove that service in a former Soviet Satellite country was far superior than what I now experience. At $5 per minute. And I promise you nothing was said except I could hear her loud and clear halfway around the world not talking to me in her seething way. She would not be suited to telephone sales I think.
So I tried to tell her, the cheery telephone sales girl not my girlfriend at the time, I was really not interested and she was not dismayed and contiued to describe the features in detail, cheerily and politely. I listened and then it hit me. Why do I need all this stuff on my cell phone? Camera OK I get that, very good feature. But all this other stuff on those small screens and come to think of it I am noticing that alot of things are coming with features really not necessary. MP3 player feature in the cell makes sense, solitaire does not. If you are someplace that is that boring call someone and if you can’t make a call leave and if you can’t do that then… A personal reassement of your life is in order. But in all seriousness, I saw a refrigerator with internet access. Why? A new type of emplyee identification card is now designed to track the movements of its owner. Does business really think they can squeeze every last ounce of productivity out of an employee every second of the day? (don’t answer that.)
Functions Creep is a phenomenon where a product is designed for one thing and used for another. I don’t want to watch movies on my computer. Why? Because I bought a TV. I don’t want to surf the net on my TV. Why? Because I bought a computer. Now some people, say like grandmothers and college students may find these features really “kewl” (as for the college student) and “Oh my” (for the grandmom) but for the rest of us these are a colossal waste of our time.
So after the cheery and polite sales girl finished I told her that I would like to see them for myself and I would go to the webpage and decide which I thought I might maybe think of, if I was to change my cell phone could possibly if I got around to it, buy.
Strangely as we hung up she didn’t seem as cheery and polite as she once was. Hmmm.
lol, its funny and i truly agree with you, and i think its normal to want a telephone to call or received calls, not to play games, search the web, listen to music, etc. etc,
My phones has all of that and if i used 2 times that i can remember is enough. Camara is cool, that i like, paying more for all theses different functions NO.
And dont call me Old Fashion.