Leaving home without a phone shouldn’t be a drama, after all it’s an object that we use it more as a distraction than out of necessity. Or so I thought, because it ended up plunging me into such a vacuum of isolation that I was about to sacrifice half a day of work just to get home. This oversight made me see not only my addiction to the phone, but also how sold we are when the mobile data connection goes away.
Technology has always been one of my passions. With the advent of mobile phones, my technological preferences ended up being centralized in these devices which gradually gained in functionality. at the same time they grew on the screen and dwindled in days away from the socket. Always with a smartphone in your pocket, ready to take a photo, write a tweet or turn on the music player. And ready everywhere to work: the smartphone has diluted the walls of my office.
Not always for the best.
“Goodbye, I forgot my mobile”
It wasn’t exactly what I thought, since I peppered the sentence with a few swear words that I prefer not to leave written. I was on the bus en route to MWC, I had my computer in my backpack and a secondary phone which, raving at me, I thought this would cover the lack of principal
First meeting: I cannot enter the congress
This year, the use of the Mobile World Congress mobile application as identification has been standardized, so it was impossible to enter the place without the application correctly configured. And of course, since the secondary mobile didn’t have a SIM card, nor an app installed, I had to shop around until I managed to connect to one of the public WiFis broadcast in the surroundings. Low minimum security.
After many minutes of downloading the app due to outages and limited Wi-Fi speed, I realized that I didn’t know the password. Luckily, I have all the passwords written in a password app, so all I had to do was go to the web, authenticate into my vault, and find the MWC app key. It’s already been half an hour. The cold was important.
I managed to activate the ID and pass the security checks. After accessing the venue, the first thing I did was set up all the congress’ public WiFi networks: two that covered all the pavilions and two more in the press room. I thought it would be related to that as long as I didn’t leave the place, but it wasn’t: I had a solid demonstration of it. how much the wireless connection varies in a large and busy environment
“Where are you? I called you”
As the WiFi did not maintain connectivity all the time, when i walked through some areas of the pavilions i found myself without internet. This meant not receiving press releases, private messages, I could not access the calendar or the rest of the communications that I usually use at work. Lack of communication may seem like an advantage, but it’s quite a problem when your work depends precisely on staying connected.
I thought I would stay connected through MWC WiFi, but no. what a desappointment
Not having a SIM card, I could not receive calls. He also didn’t have WhatsApp, the main work tool after Slack. And those who tried to contact me to verify my presence at the demos and interviews they found a silent wall that cast more doubts than answers. A disaster for them a tragedy for me; I kept wondering that something important hadn’t happened.
You can live without mobile. But…
While a hard day at work might not be the best day to leave your phone at home, I figured that having more devices connected, and considering I was attending a conference specializing in communication, I would have no problem following the course of the day. And it wasn’t so; a demonstration that left me a little moral:
- The mobile is a very useful tool if you know how to use it. It is not essential in all professions, but it tends to solve many problems in most of them; with the risk of ending up answering emails at ten o’clock at night: you have to set limits.
- I will never trust WiFi networks alone again. They can be as powerful as they want and cover maximum coverage, there is never a guarantee that they will reach any area where a good internet connection is needed.
- Yes, maybe it depends too much on the phone. Leaving all the blame on mobile push notifications isn’t the best idea: more planning and less “Where are you now?” Annotated remains.
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