leahbrier.com

This past weekend, cooped up at home, I got to watch one of my favorite movies, Keeping the Faith with Edward Norton, Ben Stiller and Jenna Elfman. It may be a predictable love story, but I just love the characters — it’s a walking punch line about a when a Priest and Rabbi and a leggy blonde fall into a love triangle!

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But the movie made me think about something else that is a very subtle story line in the overall plot. Jenna Elfman’s character is a workaholic who is attached, both physically and mentally, to her cellphone. At one point, while her phone is hidden inconspicuously in a garter under her dress, she declares, “You don’t understand. I have a relationship with my phone, we have a chemistry together, I can’t explain it.”

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IT’S TRUE! I get a lot of grief from people, friends and family, about my teeny, tiny obsession with my phone, but I do have a relationship with it — it’s a sweet and loving and reciprocal relationship at that. I give my phone the charging time it needs and it gives me access to everything and everyone I need.

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Note: Mediated-communication rant beginning!

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I am no less connected to my friends and family due to my infatuation with my blackberry, in fact I am more connected. I am able to respond to emails instantaneously, call anytime and from anywhere (within reason, thanks to At&T). I don’t believe that mediated communication of any sort, including cellphones, email, instant messenger, etc. are distancing us from each other. We need to simply embrace the fact that the medium in which we are communicating has changed, but the message hasn’t. Perhaps now that mediated communication is so ubiquitous, the message is more important than the medium — TAKE THAT MARSHALL MCCLUHAN! And once we begin to understand that we can start working on things like properly evoking emotions in written emails and texts and stopping making excuses about that flaw.

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Note: Mediated-communication rant ended!