Sometimes I wonder if cell phones actually increase productivity as much as people think they do. I mean, on one hand, they make you much more available. You can call someone as you’re walking down the street. You can call someone while you’re on the subway. You can call someone while you’re driving (although you shouldn’t use your phone while you’re driving!). And at the same time, your boss can call you at 9pm at night and tell you to come into work and fix a network issue.
But cell phones also give us a lot of options that don’t involve talking, as well. I remember a few years ago when I got my first cell phone with an internet browser on it. It wasn’t that good by today’s standards, but at the time it was awesome. And do you think it made my productivity go up or down?
On one hand, I could look up information from anywhere with a cell phone signal. At the grocery store? Not sure what the difference is between New York style cheddar cheese and Vermont style cheddar cheese? No problem, I’ll just pull out my phone and look it up!
This generation of cell phones began to incorporate better quality games, too. Gone were the days of playing Snake on your Nokia phone. Now we had color games and action games. And they would only get better.
When touch screen phones became the standard (and they are the standard, now), the games got even more advanced. I now have at least a dozen games on my phone including castle defense games, word puzzle games, and probably the most popular cell phone game of all time, Angry Birds.
I’m kind of surprised at how popular that game has become. I remember two years ago when I saw people dressed up as Angry Birds for Halloween. I mean, it was popular enough that they were selling Angry Birds costumes at Halloween stores! I’m not going to lie, though; I was tempted to get one. That game has consumed dozens of hours of my life. I play it at home. I play it on the train. I play it when I’m waiting for something somewhere. I play it in the bathroom at work (unless my boss is reading this, in which case I don’t). And every time there’s a new version of the game with more levels, I download that right away and the cycle continues.