Technically Incorrect

Where do creators of new technology get their inspiration?

Perhaps, in the case of Slydial, a new technology that allows you to leave voicemail messages for people without them knowing that you've called, it is in the creators' own life experience.

Here is a sample of situations in which, according to the creators, you will find Slydial useful:

3. Play the field more effectively. You are dating quite a few people at the same time. You don't want to leave them all text messages because there is nothing romantic about that. But a nice voicemail to each would score you points.

(Credit: CC Andyrob)

Doesn't this kind of stuff make you despair for humanity just a little? And doesn't it make you feel that the creators must have been men?

I mean, look at the reference to the boss as 'he', for example. And the mere idea of your girlfriend being a talker. So there are no men who are talkers? There are no bores who go on a first date and talk about themselves incessantly until their dinner companion goes for a bathroom break and climbs right out of the window, never to return?

As for dating a few people at the same time, well the creators manage to stoop to the word 'people' in describing their target market's dates, but you can feel just the faintest whiff of a manly patronizing quality in the phrase 'because there is nothing romantic about that.'

If you think I am being oversensitive here, please consider this next usage suggestion from the Slydial site:

Let them know that you didn't forget. You just remembered that it is your friend's birthday. You want to call her but it is really late and you don't know if she is still up. Don't take the chance that you might awake her from her beauty sleep. Instead just leave her a sweet voicemail with warm wishes and a promise of a belated birthday drink.

So let's see now, your boss is a 'he', but your friend is a 'she'. Oh, because that particular use is designed for girls, because girls care about friends, while men, oh, men never have to call their friends. They simply meet them in bars and get drunk with them. And then go off to pick up girls.

I am confused. And saddened.

Slydial appears to be a wonderful new technology that is primarily designed to enhance that side of you that is cowardly.

And one has to assume from the usage suggestions that men are more cowardly than women. Especially when it comes to communication.

I'd like to tell you what I really think about Slydial.

But, um, I think I'll just leave you a voicemail.

I would very much like to know what kind of relationships Nokia engineers had with their parents. And what sort of toys they played with as children.

I ask because I was intrigued by a New York Times interview with Tero Ojanpera, Nokia's Executive Vice President for Entertainment and Communities.

Mr. Ojanpera has a simple and positive vision of the future.

There will be you, your cellphone, your needs and your cellphone's YES button.

He believes that Nokia will be able to create phones that will be able to give you access to movies, shows, the finest spiritual lap dancing communities, the nearest clean, vacant five-star ashrams and, for ad agency employees, the nearest gym with a Google logo punchbag, all with just one click of your YES button.

I find Mr. Ojanpera's vision convincing.

Here's why.

I have never been able to use any other company's cellphone.

In the 90s, when America was being dazzled by the supposed revolution that was the Iridium satellite phone (by the look of it, it weighed more than Mary-Kate Olsen, and its ads were as tasteful as Rhubarb and Pepto-Bismol Pie), Europe was already enjoying rather cute cellphones.

I was in Europe at the time and someone wandered into my office and gave me a Nokia.

Though I am as technically inclined as a rancid raccoon, I could actually make this thing work.

I could even send text messages to people in meetings. (me: HOW'S IT GOING? reply: THE CLIENT'S GOT A FOUR-INCH HAIR HANGING OUT OF HIS NOSTRIL.)

There have been moments when, having arrived in the US, I was deceived by unscrupulous cellphone providers who foisted other brands on me.

Couldn't make them work. Even after staring at the instruction manual for days.

It got to the point where I took a malfunctioning non-Nokia back to the store.

and look how lovely Finland is.

(Credit: mdid)

The boy behind the counter, looking for all the world as if he had sniffed glue that was well past its sell-by date, said: "Oh, yeah. We've been having trouble with these. In fact, we've discontinued them."

He then was charming enough to offer to replace my phone with another.

It was exactly the same phone, but, and I want to know who invented this word, 'reconstituted'.

I canceled my service right there and trawled around various sad little stores until I could find a provider with a Nokia.

Again, I could make it work with no manual. It was just like meeting your high school lover after ten years (oh, no, wait, JC Penney says teenage sex is bad for you).

I ask about the engineers and their psyches, because there must be something in the way these engineers think and feel that is different from the engineers of other companies.

They seem to understand the functions of the human brain to a degree that at least I, for one, find uncanny.

I am aware that this post sounds like someone at Nokia has paid me.

The truth is, I keep paying them.

I have a battered, dying Nokia 9300 in my pocket and I bought it in some extremely shady store (the phone didn't even come with an instruction manual) because my last one died from over-exertion.

In this state of mindless blindness, I am therefore already convinced that Mr. Ojanpera and his engineers will succeed in their aim to bring the world to my cellphone and a cellphone to my world.

You want brand insights, naive hope and a warped view of the world? Welcome.

You want objectivity? Try the news blogs.