Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. The 2018 ‘Heck, Just Use Your Cell’ Version
At least a half dozen times a day — when we run into a friend on the street or at the grocery store, while we’re out with a colleague or neighbour at our favourite local espresso house, when we find ourself near recumbent in the seating area at the Vancity Theatre waiting for the doors to open for the next film, or while we’re on the bus engaged in conversation, or in any one of another myriad of other circumstances, inevitably and much to our consternation, VanRamblings’ friend, neighbour or colleague will ask a question; not our opinion on a matter of debate, not something about which we might have information not readily available online, just a simple question that could be answered by the person VanRamblings is with simply taking their galldarn, latest model smartphone out of their pocket, and looking up the information themselves, on their state-of-the-art cellphone.
But do they? Do they take the phone they’re paying $70 and more a month for out of their pocket, check the Cineplex app if they want to know where a particular movie in town is playing or what time it starts, or fire up their smartphone’s Safari or Chrome browser, or tap on any one of the apps on their smartphone — ranging from their IMDb, CBC News, Google Maps or Weather app, to their readily available SoundHound, Shazam, TSN, Sinemia or Amazon app — hell no, they don’t. Yep, you’ve got it: they ask VanRamblings, because we’ve got a near photographic memory, an uncanny ability to recall or contextualize information, and because we’re a font of relatively useful facts — a burden we bear, but not gladly and well.

Time for a number of stories. Hang onto your hat.
The wonderful, hope of our future, Danika Skye Hammond — political activist, environmentalist, youth advocate and current BC Young New Democrats Facilitator Co-Chair (who Jeff Lee, former civic affairs reporter with the Vancouver Sun, will want to get in touch with this summer, given that both now live in or nearby the Kootenays’ beauteous Creston Valley) — was brought on last year as Volunteer Co-ordinator on current Attorney General David Eby’s winning re-election campaign, Danika — always with a genuine and heart-filled smile on her face, always with a cheery greeting at the ready, the single most humane, competent, no nonsense, and well-organized campaign co-ordinator we have ever worked with, during our 55-year history of working on federal and provincial NDP campaigns — daily wrangled some 400 eager (some new, some veteran) volunteers, each of whom needed direction, each of whom Danika kept in touch with to schedule shifts for any variety of activities in the community (Patti Bacchus & VanRamblings managing to secure a year-long case of incredibly painful plantar fasciitis, resultant from the two of us knocking on so many doors, traipsing through the neighbourhood and climbing up and down those damn stairs, while wearing ‘inappropriate for canvassing’ flat-bottomed shoes) by texting them on their smartphones. Imagine! Technology put to good use.

Every volunteer on David’s campaign, save one — a nomination candidate for office in the current Vancouver civic election campaign — who whined to Danika about his not having a cell phone, and could she please call on his home phone (which he never answers) instead, and yada, yada, yada. All his kvetching was for naught, of course. The solution? VanRamblings took this luddite (a teacher in the public school system for some 30 years!) to Virgin mobile at Oakridge, secured a new Apple iPhone for free, along with 6 gigabytes of data, unlimited calling in Canada, as well as an unlimited international text facility — all for only $45 a month, with a promise that we’d negotiate with Telus to reduce his $340 monthly Optik TV, Internet and home phone bill down to a more reasonable $140 each month!
Many years ago when travelling through Mexico, and shopping at the Libertad Market in Guadalajara, VanRamblings was surprised to discover that we love the art of the deal (no, not Donald Trump’s phony, soul-destroying ‘art of the deal’, but), the back-and-forth and human connection involved in negotiating a reasonable settlement as to the cost of goods — just about as much fun as it is possible to have with both feet planted firmly on the ground. We still, to this very day, love the art of the deal.

So, this fellow now has a brand-new, free Apple iPhone, with a great, instantaneous texting facility that the good, young folks at the Virgin kiosk give him instruction on, supplemented by further instruction from VanRamblings on the Canada Line trip to Broadway and the #9 bus ride to David’s campaign office on West Broadway, where we showed a delighted Danika Skye Hammond (future, much-beloved Premier) that a new smartphone has been acquired, passing on the new telephone number (employing a 778 exchange, the remainder of the number identical to this fellow’s home phone) — and what does this guy do? Yep, he takes the phone home, places it in a drawer, never takes it out of the drawer (even a year later), while continuing to pay the $45 a month plus tax.
Needless to say, no more work on David’s campaign. VanRamblings asks this cogent question of you: do you really want this fellow representing your economic and social justice interests on a publically-elected body?
VanRamblings would like to comment that, “Perhaps the fellow we write about above represents a not-so-out-of-the-ordinary use of new technology.” But we don’t believe that’s true. Every single one of our elected officials in Vancouver, as well as all senior staff at City Hall, Park Board and School Board, all but live on their cellphones — comfortable with and appreciative of the technology, the whole idea of having a powerful computing device at your fingertips representing the most powerful communications device each might have ever imagined.
Yes, when it comes to use of technology among our erudite, wit-filled, endlessly curious, adept and engaged political friends, who view their smartphones as an entirely necessary, revolutionary device, VanRamblings supposes we run with a pretty tony crowd, for which we are grateful.

Still, it seems that not everyone among our friends — and everyone among your friends, we’re willing to bet — sees their smartphone as the revolutionary device that it is (and just wait til 5G comes in … wow!!!).
Nevertheless, we’d appreciate it if the folks in our circle of acquaintances & friends never, ever, ever again ask us a question that they could answer for themselves simply by pulling their cellphone out of their pocket.
Concerned about your data cap?.
Migawd, there’s free WiFi everywhere across our region, on our streets (both Telus and Shaw have established WiFi on every block in Metro Vancouver), in all of our public buildings (City Hall, School Board, Park Board, our community centres and pools), in most retail businesses (high traffic retail outlets like Starbucks and McDonald’s have reliable, lightning-fast WiFi inside their stores).
Let’s face it, with your smartphone handy, you’ve got lightning in a bottle — how incredibly fortunate we are to live in an era when transparency of communication is so readily available, where we really do have access to an information highway that only a few short years ago was unimaginable.

VanRamblings will leave you with the following story …
On Friday evening, having ridden our bike to a nearby grocery store, and while we were shopping inside the store, a young girl holding a smartphone whizzed past us, crouching down a ways along the aisle, talking to beat the band on her phone, which was directed towards the shelving that held a variety of sparkling beverages, an animated conversation taking place with another girl, a friend it seemed, who appeared to be in the process of planning a party of some sort and who were, together, shopping for all of the items that would be necessary to purchase in order to make the party a success, the girl on the other end of phone just as animated and excited in her commentary as the young girl crouching a ways down the aisle.
“Slumber party,” a woman approaching with a buggy said to me — the woman, clearly the girl’s mother, who could see the look of amazement on our face at what we were seeing transpire. “A slumber party, and a birthday party for her best friend,” the mom said, nodding in the direction of her daughter. “I’m just here to place the items in the buggy, and pay for the whole thing when she’s done. Fascinating, isn’t it? Realistically, would either one of us have thought, even a few years ago, that in 2018 we’d find ourselves in an era when a young girl would have access to a technology like Facetime to do her shopping with a friend, when her friend lives miles away, across the water, in a whole other community?”
At which point the young girl in the store arose from her crouch, waved her mother over to load the 2-litre bottles of sparkling juices into the buggy, and off the two went to continue their scurry around the grocery store, in cheery and focused pursuit of the “perfect” items to make the slumber / birthday party the success that it was most definitely destined to be.
VanRamblings asks: if a 9-year-old girl is as comfortable with technology as she surely appeared to be, employing her smartphone to its maximum capability to make her life easier, to enhance the quality of her life, to take the greatest delight in ‘shopping with her friend’ who lives kilometres away, on the other side of the water, the communication just as peerless and joy-filled as one wish and hope for this young girl / woman of promise and capacity, is it not possible that we — each and every one of us — might develop the same facility with, the same ‘you don’t even have to think about it’ love for a device of utility, a device with access to wisdom and knowledge, and information that will serve only to make our lives easier and perhaps, even, more fulfilling?
And, oh yeah: Don’t Ask Me. Just Google It. C’mon Now. Really?