My sister-in-law called today to ask 
me to look for a phone for my niece. 
She mentioned it a while ago and at 
that point, anything was fine, as long 
as it made calls and texts. The niece 
was not to have a data plan, so it 
seemed like I could find a new phone 
for a reasonable price quite easily.

But today, the criteria were 
different. My niece *needs* an iPhone, 
because if she doesn't have one, 
she'll be excluded from her friends' 
group chats. She also *needs* data so 
she can look up bus schedules. So I 
looked up the price of a new iPhone 
and nearly iVomited. I believe my 
sister-in-law was a little taken aback 
as well. I could hear a slight gasp on 
the other end of the line.

Later, I went on eBay and found that 
you can get a used iPhone SE for a 
little over $100. I suspect that the 
SE won't get the next iOS update, but 
it should be useful for as long as it 
will last in the hands of a young 
girl (everywhere I look, people are 
making do with cracked screens....)

But the thing that really hit me was 
that the iPhone (and especially 
iMessage) had become the defining 
mechanism of social cliques. Without 
an iPhone, my niece would be an 
outsider. If I wasn't around, 
searching eBay for a phone, my 
sister-in-law probably would have just 
bit the bullet and paid for a phone 
she really couldn't afford, just to 
make sure her kid wasn't ostracized.

I think -- but I don't know because I 
don't have kids -- this would have 
been one of those points where I would 
have just said, "we're not doing 
that." I was raised by quite 
old-school parents (and an even 
older-school grandma) and they 
wouldn't have batted an eye in 
refusing to pay for such a thing. I 
know, though, that many people must be 
caving in and it bothers me. 

I think that might be why I'm such a 
fan of retro-tech. I love getting as 
much out of old things as possible. I 
also like simplicity and hate waste 
(Grandma went through the Great 
Depression and we saved *all* the damn 
leftovers). I think it's because of 
that mentality that I've kept old cars 
on the road, repaired old cell phones 
for fun, fixed up an old house, and 
I'm typing this on a ThinkPad R500 
that's been upgraded almost as far as 
is possible.

Sometimes I think that the people who 
buy everything up to the limits of 
their credit are the smart ones. You 
know? You only live once and the 
creditors can't collect once you're 
dead. Meanwhile, you get to consume to 
your heart's content and be in the 
in-crowd. But I know that I could 
never live like that. I don't like 
how it feels.

In any case, while I know that old 
will rarely be cool among the general 
public, at least in the gopherverse my 
clique (are we that?) shares an 
appreciation for simplicity, re-use, 
and repair, which is nice.

       *          *          *

You're making me think a lot, 
phloggers. Among the pieces that I've 
really enjoyed lately are Yargo's 
piece on digital minimalism and 
dgold's "We Have Always Been at War" 
(I really need to find another Orwell 
work to read) and "Reformed Rational 
Calendar." I think the extra summer 
half-month *has* to be called 
"Thermidor". There's no other 
historically responsible choice!

       *          *          *
 
A news tidbt that might be of 
interest: the NY Public Library has 
discovered that the copyright to a 
great number of books published prior 
to 1964 has expired. You may find a 
lot more books available through 
Project Gutenberg and other sites 
shortly. 

Source: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/kz4e3e/millions-of-books-are-secretly-in-the-public-domain-you-can-download-them-free