Parisian living – Cell phone free?
January 24, 2009
Photo Erica Berman
Written by Jen Holup
Technology can be, at the same time, a great aide and a great adversary to modern urban living. Yet, rather than search for a generalized answer to this dense question, the most effective measure we can take is simply to ensure that we use technology critically and slowly in our everyday lives.
Since September, I have survived in the cosmopolitan city of Paris without a cell phone. My initial reasons for eschewing the mobile were entirely economic. On my previous trip to France three years ago, I estimate that I must have spent hundreds of Euros over a six-month period on prepaid mobile cards- it is difficult to acquire an affordable monthly plan for a short stay. After passing my phone off to a fellow student (and warning him about the conscientious use of the prepaid cards), I began to consider the true worth of those six months of convenient pocket communication. I asked myself what I had really used the cell phone for over that half year. Rather than a tool to facilitate work, my cell phone existed solely for the convenience of text messaging and a few brief phone calls to arrange evening plans. In this way, I realized that I felt I had needed my cell phone in order to stay in touch with my social network. Each time I ventured to the kiosk with 50 Euros in my hand to buy myself 3 weeks more “what’s up?” textos, I must have been internally convincing myself that this purchase would ensure a continued connectedness to my friends. But could I not have just as easily gotten by with a landline and the Internet?
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