I am amazed by this article. I'm not saying it ain't true, I'm sure it is, but how insecure we must have become to feel like this. I always knew we were tribal to a certain extent and liked to feel part of the "crowd" just look at football supporters, but to feel excluded because we don't have the latest Iphone?

As long as the gadget I have does the thing I want it to do adequately and safely, why do I need to change it ? I still have an iphone 4. I paid $135 for on ebay. I can still take photos, text, make telephone calls, access the internet (I don't) use Skype (I don't).... OK it has a larger screen and is slimmer and maybe lighter, but to spend a couple of grand on superficiality seems somewhat extravagant...... An accessory for the "smashed avocado" cult perhaps ?

Am I Robinson Crusoe ? I should be interested to hear what other posters on this site think.

Crazy consumerism! Fools and their money are easily parted - and all the other adages and sayings about weak people in general. I don't even have a basic mobile. Like 99.9% of people, I don't need one. I understand that you can't use Uber without a smart phone. Well feck Uber. I remember trying to do something online, but failed because I couldn't provide a mobile number. As I can't remember what it was, I didn't really need it. Feck it too. All clearly 'refugee' types wandering the streets have one of the things stuck to their ears, at out expense! If I see an idiot in a crowd walking towards me, head down, concentrating on texting, I stop, turn sideways and extend an elbow for them to walk into. People are really hard to like or respect these days.

ttbn

*…People are really hard to like or respect these days…*

The innocence of your statement made me laugh. It's called growing old “disgracefully”. It can be a lot of fun though!

Snake..

Good post, but I like smashed avocado. It's good stuff! My little chicky-babe is one of them though. Makes for interesting times!

dd,

I don't know how you can read "innocence" into my statement. Perhaps you should be a High Court judge. High Court judges 'discover' things that don't exist in the simplest of texts.

Whizz bang gadgetry, as addictive as whizz bang poker machines and those addicted the last ones to realise, they can't go a day without their little technology injection? When instead, it is just a useful tool!

And to the point where they find themselves unable to socialise like normal human beings, shirt fronting/ironing out differences with those they disagree with or dislike and hugging those we love! Or close physical proximity interaction, with hot foxy Ladies.

The imagination boggles!

Imagine this addiction for phones at the turn of the century, and an over heated overdressed gentlemen madly winding the the handle on the Alexander Graham Bell device to communicate with something resembling an actual human being?

And were the (somebody-anybody talk to me) telegraph texting, welded to the key depiction, not completely absurd, we would all likely conclude the addicted "ringer" was a couple of baskets short of a picnic!

Social inclusion gave us our humanity and normal human empathy!

This head bowed anonymous addiction can just as easily rob those isolated by it, of it?

That said, I have the latest fold up $99.00 version, in case I need to ask Scotty to, beam me up Scotty?

I mean, if we're going to go nutty, why stop at half measures and sliding down the escape beam to exit the asylum?

Don't touch that switch Diver! I'm only halfway down!
Alan B.

Men have been buying lumps of carbon with zero practical value for vast prices for many years. The iPhone is in the same league.