A few days ago I realised I’d let my nasal hairs go too long without a trim. I realised when a 2 year old I know pointed them out. She likes to say how soft people’s hair is, and told me I had “softs” in my nose. When a kid spots the softs in your nose, that’s a dead giveaway that your personal grooming has slipped.

This little interaction got me thinking, though. What if you could somehow harness that innocent honesty? What if the complete lack of guile combined with wide-eyed wonder at all the world around them could become a power for good, not evil. Can you see where I’m going? I want someone to develop an iPhone app called “2YO”. Before going anywhere important such as a business meeting, a date, or a job interview, you could scan the iPhone up and down your body like a metal detector, and then wait for the programmed two-year-old-intelligence simulator to let you know how you look. As well as notification that there were softs in your nose it could give other important feedback such as “you smell funny”, “your eyebrows stick out”, or the classic “that a clown shirt”. This could help in so many situations. My wife today tried to signal to me I had something stuck in my teeth. I thought she was licking her fingers after finishing her lunch. 2YO would have no such subtlety: “Why your teeth green?” would be all you’d need to hear to prevent a social disaster. Of course when 2YO says “Where your hair gone?” or “You old. You fat.” then there’s probably not much you can do other than suck it in and hope for the best.

The only other downside I can see is if, having addressed all unforseen personal grooming disasters, when your job interview is going along wonderfully, 2YO decides to chuck a tantrum screaming for a biscuit. The other difficulty is how you fit a diaper to an iPhone; you would not want an accident whilst making an important call. Hmm, there may be a few bugs to work out before this hits the app store. In the meantime you could always polish up the back of the iPhone to work like a mirror.

Wave your hands more, I can’t hear you!
I wonder if medical science has discovered the nerve that connects our hands to our vocal chords?

Some things are harder to describe “hands free” than others. If you are trying to tell someone how to navigate a series of left, right turns on a curly back-road, for example, a bit of hand action is almost mandatory. What is really funny is watching somebody describe this same route over the phone. The receiver of the directions can obviously not see their hands, and yet the direction-giver will still wave them about. It is even funnier if they try to describe which exit to take at a round-about. At this point the complex hand movements may result in inadvertantly dropping the phone.

The capacity to add meaning to words by swirling gestures is often credited to different nationalities, some more than others. An Italian friend of mine willingly admits his need to talk with his hands. It is almost a badge of honour, a treasured aspect of his heritage. Talking with your hands is something he savours like a good glass of wine. For him, talking without his hands would be like drinking watered down grape juice in comparison. It is a far richer communication experience, as it involves greater depths of physicality. More than hearing is involved but also kinaesthetic aspects of space and time, and the visual processing of movement and scope. Having a conversation where both people wave their hands is a deep and moving experience, about half way between talking and giving each other a big hug.

Basically anything swirly really needs at least one hand free if you want to describe it properly. If you were to tie string across both hands and ask someone to describe a spiral staircase you may find you’ve discovered a new knitting method. Either that or you’d have to free the person using scissors.

Can you imagine a world where everything could be discussed hands free? What a boring place it would be. You could never tell someone the distance between the pegs needs to be “about this big” or to stir the soufflé mix “sort of like this” (see, without my hands, you actually have no idea what I’m talking about!). We could never discuss soft serve ice cream cones, spiral staircases, and definitely not fishing stories. If somebody were to discover the secret nerve responsible for this phenomenon, maybe we could just short-circuit the fishing stories part and keep the rest? Now that would be a scientific discovery worth making.
Posted by A.Ready at 9:03 PM 0 comments
Sunday, January 6, 2008

I recently upgraded my mobile phone. This is always a very exciting time for me. As most phone contracts seem to last at least 24 months it is more exciting than Christmas or a birthday. These special occasions come along every year, whereas the biannual mobile phone upgrade is a much rarer occurrence.

I don’t know why, but I love mobile phones. The only thing that sometimes annoys me is the fact people can call you while you are doing something important. A few times it has rung when I’ve even been in the toilet. If mobiles didn’t interrupt so often they’d almost be the ideal gadget. This may seem contrary to the whole point, but what appeals about the mobile phone is its ridiculously high gadget quotient rating, rather than being easily contactable no matter what I am doing. Oh, also the fact that I can call other people even if they may be away from home in the middle of doing something important. That’s really handy.

Human beings are an intensely gadget-driven race. Just look at the space station. Not a great deal of practical use but, man, what a gadget! Or, take cutlery for example. It’s generally much easier to eat with your hands, but this wonderful tool means you no longer have to get your fingers covered in sticky barbecue sauce when you eat pork ribs. Unless, of course, you want to get messy so you can lick your fingers clean afterwards. This may not be entirely relevant to mobile gadgetry, unless you tend to clean your phone the same way. The coolest new gadget on my mobile is GPS navigation. This now means that whenever I get lost, I can work out just how badly confused I am. Unfortunately this still happens a bit as I tend to be half-way through most journey’s before the GPS has worked out where I am. I must get in the habit of turning it on sooner.

My new phone comes with many time-saving features. The calendar is great, it means I never need to carry a pen and paper because I can always jot a note or a date straight into my mobile. Not having a pen does make it difficult to sign cheques or paper forms, but I have thought of an even gadgetier way around this. I plan to emboss my signature on the back of the phone’s case. I could also carry a small ink-pad, thus allowing me to use my phone as an instant signature stamp. Another bonus of this fantastic new invention is that I will be able to sign my name in about one tenth of a second – I’d just whack my phone down on the piece of paper. This, of course, is so long as I don’t include the time taken to dig the ink pad out of my pocket, open it, moisten it under a nearby tap, rub the back of the phone on it, correctly orient the phone before stamping, and then also to wipe the phone clean after locating a piece of paper towel. Other than that it would make signing things a breeze.

By the way, you better not suggest this to Nokia before I do or I will personally call your mobile every time you are on the toilet, and pretend to be a wrong number from Finland.
Posted by A.Ready at 9:32 PM 0 comments
Thursday, January 31, 2008