Are we there yet? I Wonder

We are slowly approaching the i-Age, an age when the human body will be modified to have the neck hooked downward (like that of a goose) so that it can better accommodate our 24/7 addiction to our smartphones.  

Just look around the next time you are in the supermarket, at the shoppers loading their trolleys with one hand while scrolling through their phones with the other; at risk-loving pedestrians crossing the road with their eyes glued to their phones; at young men and women on ‘dates’ in which both parties spend more times on their phones than they do looking at each other and even in church, where congregants scroll through WhatsApp messages as the sermon goes on. Imagine with me a future where our finger pads will widen at the base and become more pointed at the tips for optimal touchscreen functioning, ha ha ha!

I was watching some local celebrity influencers recently and one of them was crushed when he realised his beloved had not bought him the latest iPhone for his birthday. As one who has never understood the hullabaloo around i-anything—iMac, iPhones, iCicles (just kidding), I decided to check out the iPhone 14 Plus on Amazon and saw that it costs USD 633. Yes, Shs2.39 million for a phone, or Kshs 95,076 at current exchange rates. Let us take in a deep breath. 633 dollars—for a mobile phone. 

With that amount, I could pay my children’s school fees for a term and a half in advance, or I could buy enough clothes to take care of all our clothing needs from January to December. 

Better still, I could make a healthy down payment on a plot of land. But no, there is a human being with one head (not six) who is going to soberly, and with careful consideration, spend $633 on one phone.

As a friend of mine likes to say, “Just because you don’t have money, don’t assume everyone else doesn’t!” To each his own iDream, but unless that phone is going to be giving birth to a stack of dollars every night, iCan’t!!!