You might rightly ask: why iPhone is ruining my life?

Before I stir up the contentious debates of iPhone v Android. A highly contentious issue (apparently). One that rivals the great Holden v Ford emnity of generations past. I’m definitely a fan of anything that is a genuine productivity tool, making my job/life easier. I’m also an avid user of technology and very appreciative of anything that incorporates sleek, stylish design into the mix. It’s not the product that I have issues with, but what it’s done to social interactions. Or more specifically lunch with friends.

Lunch with friends is usually a rowdy affair, with lots of lively conversation because we’re all eager to share our life. There are the natural story-tellers amongst us and I love leaning back into my chair sipping a wine and just surrendering to the path being mapped for me. I like know the updates of friends-of-friends, acquaintances and discovery of mutual friends unknown. I love all the little things that you learn about someone by just sitting down to a meal with them. I loved it until iPhone.

You see amongst my friends, there is a distribution of 3G, 3GS and 4 releases. Over lunch, instead of the usual catch up our rowdy banter comprises of iPhonecentric behavior. We have speed races of which phone release performs a task faster with obvious outcomes. I know how many songs are stored on each friends iPhone, but there was no mention of what these songs were, if they’re important, have they just been to concerts or discovered some new-to-them sound. Are the 9,000 odd songs stored by one friend his absolute favorites? I don’t know. instead of sharing personal information about our lives we received updates on most recent app downloads, with many apps being downloaded immediately as a result. Das spent most of the lunch working through a language learning app (I was permitted to look over her shoulder at one point) and the two people present (myself, one of them) were then castigated for not owning the beloved phone.

It was at this point, mistakenly obviously, that Bee mentioned she was thinking about upgrading but was also looking at an Android. The debate was long and serious from then on in…

When lunch had finished I left realising that something significant has changed. This isn’t the first time I’ve had iPhonecentric conversations. It’s happened with other groups of friends as well. While I think the technolgy is here to stay and will continue to fuse social and business universes. I hope our relationship to it changes. I hope I never find myself sitting in a cafe opposite someone I care about while we read each others facebook news feed, twitter or blog posts to find out about each other. I hope I never have to wrestle that phone from your determined grasp to explore your life. So put the freaking phone away when we’re out to lunch.