Categories and Applications: Living by the Rhythm of our iPhones

If the iPhone has done nothing else, it has introduced us to the incredible power of simple applications running in a portable electronic environment that we can access immediately and efficiently throughout our days for almost any task we can imagine (although Verizon would certainly like to problematize the issue of access, but that is another discussion). The app store on iTunes has become a phenomenon, with hundreds of millions of downloads taking place and new, innovative applications being added everyday.

But maybe I said it wrong. I implied that we choose applications for almost any task we can imagine. But this suggests that we first decide what we want to do, and then we choose an application that might help us. Indeed if the applications are actually applications, then they would seem to function this way necessarily. But sometimes it seems that we first choose an "application" and then let that dictate what we do. In this way, the applications are no longer applications at all, but instead categories that govern the boundaries of our imaginations, and accordingly our actions. This seems to underscore the peculiar challenges of living in a high tech age. We both dictate the rhythms of our machines and software applications, but then we also live by those rhythms. The problem is that the people that are designing the technologies are not necessarily the people living in response to the technologies. We often seem to live lives that appear to be so much in our control, but in fact are subject to unquestioned norms that are dictated to us.