ShaulaBlog - clear-eyed capitalism

Lolita gets an iPhone

July 1, 2007 on 3:24 pm | In Along the way |

A week at the beach meant I finally had time to catch up on my fun reading. On my stack was “Reading Lolita in Tehran”. I didn’t really know what to expect, but I really enjoyed it, it was an interesting mix of literature class and Iranian cultural history. Professor Nafisi is a big Nabokov fan, because for her he captures some of the experience of totalitarianism. In Lolita, I now understand Lolita (whose real name in the book is Dolores which Nafisi points out is Spanish for ‘pain’) to be a study in having your identity obliterated by someone more powerful, that the protagonist, Humbert, cares more about his desire to possess a representation of Lolita, than who Dolores actually is. Nafisi finds parallels to her experience as a woman in Iran who grew up in relative freedom and then had a suffocating identity imposed upon her with the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini.

I feel my own parallel, but my modern Humbert is named Sprint. Doubtless there are those among you who will initially find it melodramatic to suggest that I am Lolita to my cell phone company’s Humbert, but I urge you to reconsider. Allow yourself to sink, for a moment, into the helpless rage you felt the last time you interacted with your mobile provider. Hearken for a moment to the sense of molestation you felt when they forced you to choose among undesirable evils as you sought to get some need addressed – and indeed, that’s part of what makes this metaphor so apropos – that dependency we’ve developed on mobile technology. You and I can no more walk away from our telecom providers than 12 year old Dolores could run away from Humbert once he had become her guardian. Admittedly we have a little more freedom, we could run from Humbert to Uncle Willy or Neighbor Craven Moorehead, but the market power of scale and the contract legal environment keep us relative children when it comes to negotiating for reasonable treatment.

I recently upgraded my Palm Treo, to a new model that hangs for 6-8 seconds at the end of every call, reboots at least 3 times a week and while it turns on instantly, just as I’ve started to interact it remembers it has a lock-out feature to prevent pocket calls. The sync is much faster, and it seems like it should be better, but these rough edges have so constantly sanded me that I’m ready to stomp the thing into smithereens. The feeling of those raw places, as well as the supreme irritation of being forced to accept a 2 year contract to make the slightest change to my phone plan despite having been with my phone company for over 4 years at this point, built tension during the 2 hour wait keeping My Beloved company in the Apple Store line. Watching the crowds cheering the victorious purchasers with their beautiful black bags with brightly colored icons, I felt a glimmer of wishful hope, and thus when we reached the head of the line I took him by the hand and said “I’m in”. Now as I wait for activation, I look forward to switching to different sync software after 10 years of being restricted to 15 categories (ye gods, it really has been that long!) I marvel at the wonder of being able to use a single set of headphones for both making phone calls and listening to audio (currently, I have to have two distinct sets, both in little bags in my purse). I know in my heart that sooner or later AT&T will provide me opportunities to work on my meditation practice, but it feels like an afternoon of glorious sunshine to enjoy my window of wishful hope.

If we have to so disconnect from our sense of fairness and justice to cope with everyday experiences like getting telecom service, how will we ever address poverty or homelessness?