To the point: Now it's gone! And I am alone again, alone
It is an age-old wisdom that you only realize what meaning something has for you when it is no longer there. Thus, the first friend is an unromantic oaf exactly until he tramples away.
And then you miss him. If things go badly, terribly. A classic.
I had a similar experience with my white, old iPhone: I pushed it around a hundred times, threw it down, cursed it, pressed it into the children's hands as a hush agreement, stuck it between two sofa cushions when it rang, splashed beer over it; lovelessly banged it on the soap dispenser in the toilet so that it wouldn't once again clatter off the tailgate into the orcus ... and suddenly it's no longer there! Gone!
My dear cell phone, not only carelessly left lying around (by me), but also taken mean (by someone who also had to times). If I had found my iPhone again on the soap dispenser, when I looked for it half an hour later, I would not know exactly how often I look at its display within a day, quickly send a message, take a picture, check my mails. In short, I missed my iPhone, my pictures, my data, and the feeling that I could be reached if I wanted to. I felt strangely helpless, disconnected, as if someone had abandoned me in the desert without water. And what do I do now in the streetcar with my hands? With my eyes??
The next morning, I had a visitor in the editorial office. He arrived ten minutes late and excused himself by saying that he was a bit uncoordinated today because he had left his cell phone at home. Ha! Another one of those. If you left your pacemaker somewhere, the total malfunction could still be explained. But it's about a phone. And we are obviously dependent on it.
Since neither lost and found office nor the police, neither iCloud nor Findmyiphone could give me hope of seeing my phone again, I overcame the pain of separation and already had a new iPhone less than 24 hours after the loss, of course the next generation but one, with even more bites and even more tools. Not even the little bag from the lost one fit the newcomer anymore. But you know, as a journi and mommy, of course you have to ... imagine ... if something were. And I was not even firmly ashamed of it.
Today, the cell phone is not only a central tool, it is part of the person, not to say the personality. It is worn close to the body, is the most loyal communication partner when drinking beer or taking public transport, is dressed and decorated, tidied and fed, cleaned and brought up to date. It's better off than many a colleague who complains weeks later that he hasn't heard from him in ages.
This finding about our mobile addiction fits with the results of a new study by Finland's Aalto University, commissioned by Swedish mobile equipment supplier Ericsson: According to this study, delays in downloading videos to cell phones create as much stress for users as solving a math problem or watching a horror movie. Uahhhhhh!!!
For the study, test subjects had to complete a task within a set time limit. This forced them to watch poorly buffered and jerky videos. The pulse rate, brain activity and eye activity of the test participants were measured. The result: if the loading pause lasted six seconds or longer, the subjects' heart rate increased by an average of 38 percent, significantly more stressful than, for example, the annoying wait at a supermarket checkout. It should be added that the study took place in Denmark, which is one of the countries worldwide with the highest streaming speeds on the Internet. So the test subjects probably burst their bubble even faster than would have been the case here. Although I get quite nervous just describing the study setting.
Item: Slow loading of videos on the cell phone is the horror of today - and after a small private study I can say: immediately after losing the cell phone.
You can now imagine how much it weighs on your heart to leave your cell phone on a soap dispenser and then curse like a bastard because you knew the moment you put it down that you were going to leave it there. It's a wonder I survived that. I could already see the Blick headline: "Mobile phone gone: collapse."
In the future, health insurance companies will offer theft insurance for cell phones in order to reduce health care costs. But it probably wouldn't be a bad idea if we all left our cell phones somewhere from time to time. Just choose a safe place for your treasure and remember it well. Maybe write down where you put it on a piece of paper. No! Not "notes" ...
Anne-Friederike Heinrich, Editor-in-Chief Werbewoche
