It’s overcast and a bit breezy this morning in Clifftop, West Virginia. My phone tells me that it’s 68 degrees, but my phone tells me a lot of things. I wonder about that.
My earliest vision of a telephone was one hanging in my grandparents' kitchen. It was black and had a rotary dial. Come to think of it, I believe every phone I saw was black at that time. It was a marvel of its day, a direct line to the outside world, neatly fixed to the wall, and always within reach when needed. The rotary dial clicked and whirred as you turned it, each digit a deliberate step toward connecting with someone far away.
I recall reading the Sunday morning Dick Tracy comics. He wore a watch that doubled as a video phone. My wife has one of those on her wrist, and our son does a video call with us to watch our granddaughter, Dot, crawl across the floor.
Fast forward to today, and my phone is so much more than a device for making calls. My phone tells me the time; it’s my clock, my stopwatch, my egg timer. It’s my personal assistant, letting me "Google"—yes, it’s a verb now—an endless supply of information from the World Wide Web, whether it’s true or not. It’s my translator, making my Star Trek dreams come true, allowing me to communicate with anyone in their native tongue.
My phone keeps my calendar, which I can share with others and even let them add events to. It carries maps of the world and provides turn-by-turn directions to anywhere I want to go. It’s my camera, capable of capturing an endless supply of photos and videos of the world around me.
It’s also a television, streaming movies, shows, and short videos from this thing called the cloud (which, despite its name, has nothing to do with the weather). My phone is my stereo, playing music from satellites orbiting above us, and it connects wirelessly to Bluetooth earbuds or speakers.
Remarkably, my phone has become a wallet too. I can pay for things with a tap, using money that seems to float in the air. It even holds digital copies of my driver's license and insurance card, handy if I ever get stopped by the police.
Thinking about all this, I can't help but wonder: Is my phone really a phone anymore? It has evolved into something so much more, a multi-functional device that connects me to the world in ways that were once the stuff of science fiction.
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