“What has it got in it’s pocketses!?”

Do you know this famous outcry of Gollum when he’s unable to solve Bilbo’s unintended ‘riddle’?

The question is a valid one. What have we got in our pocketses nowadays? I guess most of us carry a shiny square of metal/glass/plastic that has become the Swiss Army Knife of our civilisation, if I may call this sorry state a civilisation, sorry to all you Romans, Greek, Chinese, Indian, Phoenician, Maya etc out there.

I carry an iPhone, yours might read Samsung, Sony or something else. There might even be one or two Windows phones or Blackberries out there in the wild or is that just an urban legend?

My iPhone serves as…. wow, what a surprise, a Phone! But it also helps me find my way, provides me with music during my photo walks, keeps me in contact with friends and family. And there’s a small gnome living inside who knows everything. The guy’s called Google. Funny bugger!

Then again it’s quite a fine camera, as far as digital goes…

And it tells time! It’s been 8 years I guess since I last wore a watch. You know, those things you wrap around your wrist with funny numbers and arrows on it.

Once upon a time, those (or at least their forebears who lived in a pocket) were called Time Keepers!

I more and more tend to see them as Time Wasters!

Even Time Stealers, because they do not waste our time themselves, they make us steal time from ourselves. They cry constantly for our attention, beeping and trembling piteously in our pocketses.

What do we have in our pockets? A Thief, that’s what it is!

For beside those fine and useful apps that run on the smartphones there’s others that more and more take, no steal our time. Ride a bus, look at the people! Near everyone has his or her nose glued to a small glowing screen.

Facebook, Instagram, Messenger…. they have become so much a part of our lives that we don’t even notice how much time they take from us.

Do we ever look up? Do we ever really see the world any more? Do we notice the things that are there for us to make a photograph of? No, we take selfies, and I deliberately say TAKE here for once, because we take them away from ourselves.

Primitive people tended to think that to be photographed robbed a bit of their souls. I think they are not that primitive in thinking so. That whole selfie business does take a bit of our souls. It serves to show how self centred we have become!

But always remember, the front facing selfie camera of yous phone is less performant than the rear facing one. Use that instead to capture precious moments.

And please do me a favour, go into the settings of your iPhone or the similar place on Android or whatever. Go to the battery usage setting and look what it says! How much time have you spent on facebook and it’s friends the last 24 hours, the last 7 days!

OK now…. THINK!

Thanks for reading, and well, I’ll post this on Facebook too, so you can call me a thief!