We live in a world of smart things. We have computers that can monitor what we like, smart bombs that know their targets (which is kind of scary, when you think about it), and even our phones are supposed to be geniuses all of a sudden. But when it comes right down to it, what is the advantage we are supposed to garner from having wise acre phones, anyway? Are we supposed to test ourselves in steel cage chess against them, or something? Or perhaps our phones are a part of some dark illuminati plot to overthrow the world, by slowly sapping our ability to plan our own lives and interact with actual people? Yeah, a theory like that would make a lovely novel, wouldn’t it?

Meanwhile, back in the world where we have taken our anti-psychotic meds, phones are smart for reasons which can hardly be described as nefarious in nature. For one thing, the phones which we call smart really aren’t. They have fast processors, it’s true. And they have lots of storage space (often more than a high end desktop computer from only ten years ago would have had). These could both theoretically be considered to be “smart” characteristics, if they (like the scarecrow) only had a brain. This goes into consciousness theory, which we don’t need to delve into here.

But suffice it to say, a phone that does not realize how much it rules your very life can never truly be called smart. We call these devices “smart phones” because they let us act as if we were smarter than we know we really are. Herein lies their advantage over those dumb old phones we used to carry. There is pretty much no excuse to ever miss or forget about a special occasion. And we can now communicate better than any prior generation has been able to before us. What if Albert Einstein had had access to a smart phone?