| Gadgets: A Personal Note |
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bridges vol. 12, December 2006 / Kalt's Corner on Science & Society by Stefan Kalt
Although the T3's screen extender hooked me, I had gone searching for a handheld for an entirely different reason: to retrieve e-mails wirelessly. Naturally, I convinced myself that I couldn't live without being in wireless communication with my co-workers, friends, and family. But subconsciously, I didn't care who sent me e-mails or what they were about; I just wanted to retrieve them with a tiny gadget. Getting to them wasn't easy because I had to set up something called a "Bluetooth connection." Theoretically, this enabled my cell phone to serve as a modem for the T3. Although my technological illiteracy deeply embarrassed me at the time, I got a confidence boost when I learned that my service provider - T-Mobile - really had no idea how the set-up procedure worked. Nor did Palm, maker of the T3. Nor did Sony Ericsson, my cell phone manufacturer. I exaggerate a little - someone at Sony Ericsson did finally solve the Bluetooth mystery. "Kip" was his name (or so he told me), and he was the last person that Sony Ericsson would assign to me before, as one customer representative sweetly confessed, I'd have to be handed back over to T-Mobile for another lap around the circle of befuddlement. Kip was no sweetie, however. With barking commands, he had me filling up my T3 and my cell phone with number after number, all the while munching on something and sharing belly laughs with a girl who seemed to be sitting on his lap. Obviously, he'd handled my type before, and his regal contempt and techno-hauteur kept me off balance and meekly disposed to put into my T3 anything that he ordered. Luckily for me, those numbers were golden: The T3 was pulling e-mails out the sky that very evening. Thanks to Kip, I was suddenly able to use a second gadget: my attachable micro-keyboard. I could now proudly respond to e-mail messages with quickly contrived e-mail messages of my own. All I had to do was plop the T3 into a sort of crib and begin hammering at the clip-on keyboard. As with downloading messages, so with typing them: The messages themselves hardly mattered. The main thing was the little keyboard - it looked awfully cute. Or that's what women (usually mothers) would tell me as they admiringly strolled by my table at Pete's Coffee. I played the proud father to a T. Access to the full article is free, but requires you to register. Registration is simple and quick – all we need is your name and a valid e-mail address. We appreciate your interest in bridges. |
