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My dreamquest: what has the "phone" become?

Discover how the HTC Evo 4G transformed perceptions of calling, blending technology with daily life in unexpected ways.

Written byRazib Khan
| 1 min read
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What is this?

I experienced a very strange and perhaps illuminating dream last night. I've had an HTC Evo 4G

since Christmas (for what it's worth, Sprint's customer service has been horrible, but the phone itself is great). Before that I had phones with internet access

, but which were more primitive. At this point I probably can't imagine what life was like without a phone like the Evo. That was evident in my dream. Here's what happened. Apparently I had left the phone in my pocket while doing laundry. This meant that it was damaged. For reasons which the dream-gods did not explain to me, as a replacement I received an old school gray Nokia of some sort, the likes of which I hadn't encountered since the mid-2000s. Here's the kicker, I looked at my replacement phone, and wondered out loud: "OK, so what am I supposed to do with this phone? All it can do is call people. I don't even like calling people!" Obviously I still refer to my phone as a phone. But at this point I don't see its primary role as sending and receiving phone calls! (in fact, if I want more reliable voice I'll probably go with Skype due to issues with reception) I am reminded of the origin of the term 'stationery'

.

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