Monocolumn – Hello. It’s nice to delete you

Hello. It’s nice to delete you

The first mobile phone I had was the Nokia Brick. It had a proper name, I’m sure, but that’s how I remember it. The Brick had just three functions: making calls, sending texts and playing Snake – a strangely addictive game with graphics so basic it made Pacman look like CGI. Its memory was so limited it could fit just 90 names and numbers in its contacts book. At the time, this could be fairly frustrating. If you met someone new and wanted to see them again you had to physically delete someone else from your life. It made for awkward moments when swapping numbers. What if the person you eagerly gave your details to decided you weren’t quite important enough to make the 90? But perhaps Nokia was onto something. Our phones now have almost unlimited space for contacts – hundreds, if not thousands, of people we’ve met once at a dinner party, bumped into in a couple of times in...

Full article: http://www.monocle.com/monocolumn/2012/02/28/hello-its-ni...