iAssumptions

The new iPhone is coming out today, and I just watched the video tutorial on its features. Pretty amazing stuff. If I ever want to do something with a phone except use it as a phone, I would get the iPhone.

If I had nothing to write about but wanted the world to think otherwise, I would make my writing pretty by using different fonts.

If I couldn’t really play an old fashioned piano, I would get an electronic keyboard and load up on preset sounds and music loops that were already created by actual musicians.

If I couldn’t draw, I would use Photoshop filters to make my chicken scratches more interesting looking. If I didn’t know how to compose and shoot a decent photograph, same thing. (Actually, I’m not very good at composing and shooting a decent photograph, but I refuse to use Photoshop filters anyway.)

If I was unable to engage my friends in thoughtful conversation that lasted more than 5 minutes, I would spend that time instead downloading and assigning each of them a distinctive ring tone.

When I was a kid, I spent an hour every day practicing piano. I spent another hour drawing. On weekends, I would take a break and spend the afternoons playing baseball or tennis with my friends. Nowadays, that time is spent checking e-mail, deleting spam, setting up new filters, downloading the latest software updates, surfing to find solutions to computer problems, setting my favorite channels on my cable TV, synchronizing my iPod with iTunes, and sifting through gigabytes of digital photos to find the 10 shots that I actually want to print and keep in a scrapbook.

Technology, instead of encouraging and enhancing my talents, seems tailored to assume that I have none.