«Do you really need it?»
My Nokia N810 is a time capsule. There’s so many things of my past, circa 2010, contained in there, frozen in time. There’s lots of insights of my old self found in to-dos, notes, documents and pictures.
I found an iphone.txt text file where I was taking notes about buying my first iPhone 3G 8Gb. Actually, I wanted a 3GS 16Gb. There’s prices there (trivia: the iPhone 3GS 16Gb costed S/1,999 in February 2010) and other tidbits, but one thing stood out for me.
I wrote (translated):
- Is it convenient to have a permanent Data Plan? Do you really need it?
- I’ll need to read articles if it’s convenient or not to be always-on, always online.
Look at that! Back then, Data Plans were a lot more limited and throttled than today. Plans started at 50Mb up to 3Gb per month. 700 kbps speeds. Forget about streaming videos on your daily commute! Today, you get free unlimited data for specific services on the least. We take being online 24 hours a day for granted, not giving a moment to stop and give a thoughtful, careful decision if that’s even a good thing or not.
I’m delighted that, back then, I had the right mindset to be wary of this.