Recently I received a note from reader Marianne Werner that underscored for me just how far we’ve come with technology, particularly handheld technology, in little more than a decade.

“Thank you for your articles in the B.C. Catholic,” the retired social worker and tour guide began, before adding somewhat cryptically, “I don’t really know why I read them, since I have such limited understanding of technology.”

It was the next sentences that particularly intrigued me. “I feel blessed to have a smartphone and feel grateful to those fabulous engineers who invented it. It handles everything in my house, since I own neither a computer, laptop, or TV.”

We know that smartphones have become ubiquitous, in many cases replacing, as they have for Ms. Werner, multiple other devices. What fascinated me about my reader’s situation was how she described the wide-ranging use of her smartphone.

Clearly her reference to “limited understanding of technology” was overstated because in fact the smartphone has become her portal to so many aspects of her life.

Already, some 20 years ago Ms. Werner did away with her TV and the associated cable bill. About a decade later she parted ways with her desktop computer and multiple laptops, saying she simply found it too exasperating to deal with their updates and various “glitches.” She gave them all away.

About five years ago, after half a decade dealing with primarily email in the local public library, Ms. Werner acquired a smartphone, an iPhone 5, quite a step up from the near-relic flip-phone she was using at the time.

In her note to me, Ms. Werner listed an eclectic array of tasks she performs with her smartphone and described how indispensable the device has been during these complex COVID-19 times.

When lockdowns and shutdowns commenced, she began watching and participating in online streamed masses, first from the Vatican, through the Easter period, and then subsequently from Holy Rosary Cathedral.

As soon as churches began limited attendance reopenings, she was back at her Holy Name of Jesus Parish in Vancouver.

Almost every day Ms. Werner is in contact, through text, email, or video link, with friends and family around the world, in Germany, India, Brazil, South Korea, France, the U.S., and Colombia. One of her primary tools is WhatsApp, which she discovered about a year ago, and which, in her words, she just loves.

She has a particular fondness for Queen Elizabeth Park and enjoys speaking on the phone to family in Europe while walking through the gardens there. Ms. Werner makes short videos of the rose garden in the park to send to her sisters in Germany. In a similar vein, she notes that videos sent to her from India, for example, are easily passed on to others in her circle.

Ms. Werner is a voracious consumer of news through her smartphone and feels she was well prepared to deal with fallout from pandemic closures and product shortages. She closely watched developments in Italy and Germany and quickly prepared a three-month assortment of food and necessities in early March.

“Who needs a music service subscription?” she wonders. “I watch and listen to YouTube videos, and listen to any music I want. If I need a translation, there’s Google Translate.

“I used to spend an hour in the public library every day to just deal with emails. What a tremendous experience to now be able to do all that on the phone. The only other machine I like as much as my smartphone is the washing machine ... in terms of usefulness! I would choose my smartphone over any other gadget.

“Actually the smartphone is much more important. This little phone is my lifeline and I guard it.

“I even participated in a few meetings recently via Zoom. I’m not too keen on those, but better than no meeting, I suppose.

“Did I mention the alarm to wake me up? Another great feature.”

She went on to tell me that recently she has been taking music lessons over the phone, playing pieces on a concertina which the instructor then critiques.

Her iPhone 5S met an unfortunate demise when it fell while she was in a pedestrian crossing and a car ran over it. Staying with the Apple ecosystem, she had it replaced with an iPhone 7, and as this column goes to press she is upgrading that to the iPhone 11 with a 9 GB data plan on the Rogers flanker brand, Fido.

That data plan is for outside use. At home she relies on a Shaw internet connection at around $100 a month, and that in turn provides access to many thousands of Wi-Fi spots in the Vancouver area and beyond.

My reader ended with an introspective observation: “There is still so much to learn, but actually I have all I need. Vancouver is a world in a city. My smartphone is a world in my left hand.”

By the way, Ms. Werner is looking forward to the post-COVID time when she hopes to resume her avocation, guiding tourists around Western Canada, all the while clutching that new smartphone.

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