What's Your Perception?

Note the screw holder in this article’s picture. The reason it looks like a pill organizer was because it came from the pharmacy aisle of Walmart, but that’s just a side affect of being broad-minded is you have a perception that asks “What can object XYZ do?” instead of the traditional “Where can I find object ABC?”. More on that below.

Just from looking at the variables, it’s obvious that object XYZ (a pill organizer in this example) can easily stand in place for object ABC (a screw holder). In fact, the only reason it’s a pill organizer in the first place is because it came from the pharmacy section of the store, much the same way that a 97¢ pencil case from the Back to School section (or even a shoebox, if you’re into that kind of thing) can be a computer case (if you have a board small enough, of course). The thing I’m getting at today is perception and how it affects our daily lives.

I can already feel the thoughts I may be getting from the query I’m about to present, but I’ll do it anyway to make a point, if nothing else. We have smartphones that can play music, surf the internet, take pictures, among other things. Apple even (to my knowledge as of writing this) has an iPhone without the phone called, eloquently, the iPod. But say you don’t have so many hundred dollars to spend on a phone without the phone, or you don’t wanna get into Apple’s ecosystem. I can relate, kinda. Anyway, it’s 2021, and smartphones as we generally think of them have been a thing since around 2007 or thereabouts, so there’s no doubt you have one lying around in a drawer, collecting dust or something. It’s probably running Android 2 to Android 5 and likely doesn’t have ultrafast 4G/LTE, maybe only having the older and slower 3G, which is acceptable for what I’m about to present. Say you’re like a certain writer we all know who doesn’t always prefer to take the easy way to do things. You’d rather not use the same device that you make calls on as your primary camera/dictaphone/music player/etc. Now is when you’ll wanna see if that old thing still works. I’ll wait if you want to go look for it.

Found it? Good! Let’s continue!

Being a smartphone, it likely has a camera app on it, a music app on it, and a voice recorder app. There’s also the possibility of it taking a microSD card (likely maxing out at 32 or 64 GB, suiting our needs quite nicely) and plugging into your computer via a micro USB cable. Chances are, it’ll still work with your modern computer, especially if it’s one of those really old ones that show up as an SD card reader. From here, it’s all a matter of what you want. Need a device that has all of your library of several thousand songs for those long days when you just don’t wanna be bothered? Just dump all of your music into the “MUSIC” folder and plug a pair of headphones in. Now you’re jamming to your favorite songs by Neil Diamond, Air Supply, and Guns ‘n Roses! The device, miraculously, doesn’t need to connect to YouTube, and thus, the Internet, to buffer the songs to your device, alongside those pesky ads that mess up your train of thought. The reason? Your old phone’s music app is pulling the music straight from the files you just copied onto it, so all you need is to charge your battery! Or, say you’re waiting on that little voice recorder from China that still has a few months left in shipping? No problem, your old phone has that covered as well! Just pop in a micro SD card and use the voice recorder app. You can even download one from the app store and use it offline if your phone didn’t come with one preinstalled… It’ll work just as well for recording speech and notes. Miraculous, isn’t it? And, while that old camera may not be high-enough-quality to discern every single hair on your face from a mile away, I’m sure that if you keep the lens clean and be steady, you can get just as great of a picture from the ancient device. Or, you could be a company that doesn’t want to go through the trouble of installing a switchboard. You can download an app called “Talkie” from Google Play, connect the aging phone to a wireless network with other devices using the same app, and have, in theory, something even better than the standard. With this method, individuals can exchange files in the app just as easy as if they were texting each other. You can’t lose this way, not to mention it’s a whole lot cheaper.

Sure, you may have to wait a bit longer for it to start, and the screen may not be big enough to use comfortably for every little thing, but an old phone or other handheld can still serve a multitude of purposes, so long as it’s in working order and has the right software.

But away from technology, the bigger issue that I’m trying to get at is that our perception shapes the decisions we make, whether ill-informed or otherwise. A pill organizer is a pill organizer, a pencil box is a pencil box, and an old phone is an old phone, but these items can be so much more with a little bit of creative thinking. Sure, there could be better alternatives, and there probably are, but often times, we regard things as useless, old, worn out, obsolete, and they probably are, but they’re still incredibly versatile and useful, given that they had a chance to prove themselves and their worth. By saying that, I may have just made the market for old phones in peoples’ sock drawers soar, but there’s a potential for everything. I should know this, I drive a Scion from 2008 that still starts and use a PC from that same year as a server and main desktop at the moment. Sure, they can’t do everything a modern equivalent can, but they can still fulfill a purpose, even if it takes a bit of thought.

So, the next time you go to upgrade or replace something, before you go to chuck it in the trash box, just think, “What can this thing still do?”.