Column: Fighting technology overload ... with an old cell phone

                I have a dumb phone.

                It doesn't connect to the internet. It can't download applications. It doesn't give me Facebook updates, it can't tell me the weather and it doesn't tell people where I've been or where other people are. It calls and it texts, and that's just the way I like it.

                It isn't old enough to elicit questions from strangers, though sometimes I do wish I lugged around a Star-Tac or Zack Morris brick just for shock value. But it isa flip phone that's been put through the ringer for a few years, so I do get a few comments from friends and plenty of looks of pity.

                When they tell me I should get a smart phone, I picture a leash.

                Last week, I was told to "never forget" 9/11 at least 100 times. "Never forget" an event that was aired on live television and replayed millions of times on cable and network broadcasts in the decade since. "Never forget" a tragedy that's been exploited by companies in commercial campaigns, taken advantage of by politicians with ulterior motives and beaten to death by pundits with an eye on sweep's week and a close count of web clicks.

                Last week, after each NFL game in the league's first weekend of regular-season action, loud-mouthed ‘analysts' re-visited highlights from the game viewers just watched, carefully spelling out exactly what happened, why it happened and what it all meant. Forget the four hours we just spent parked in front of the tube – here's what you really saw, the big plays you must have forgotten by now.

                It's information overload. No happening goes without full media coverage – both broadcast and social. Everyone wants so badly to tell a story, to break news, to be the first share a delicious nugget of information with friends and followers, but all too often even the most mundane anecdote has already been chewed up and spit out and kicked around by others before words reach brain. It's like we're not even supposed to think, anymore, just absorb.

                It's a dynamic I weigh very differently in my personal and professional lives. At College Times, I love being the bearer of news, good or bad. It's my profession, my passion. I'm trained to seek it and seasoned at getting it out. I'm plugged in, and thousands are plugged in to our paper. It's a relationship both camps – the writers and readers – can depend on.

                Maybe that's why I like to unplug when I leave the office. The frenetic freeflow of fact and opinion just doesn't jibe with kicking my shoes off and plopping down on the couch, or hitting the town with friends.

Unlike the newspaper biz, in social settings, sometimes it behooves me to withhold information. The ‘inverted pyramid' format of news stories dictates that the most important information should be revealed right off the bat, in the beginning. If I'm telling a tale over happy hour beers with buddies, I'm hiding the punchline ‘till the end, in the name of surprises or laughs.

                That aspect of life would be dashed if everyone carried a smart phone. Sure, taking a picture of something funny or interesting, tagging it and shipping it off to the interwebs is quick and efficient, but I don't think it's as fun or fulfilling and, at the very least, it's much more disposable than a good story.

                If you have your own story to tell, just give me a call; I'd love to hear from you.