Take a look around. People are walking so fast with a bag or whatever they need to carry around with them on one hand. Car owners drive their car by left hand most of the time. In library, I see some students look at books, while others are busy doing something else. what’s in common in three cases? What do you think it is on walking people’s free hand, and the right hand of car owners, and something student are doing at library? Smartphone! Smartphones have become indispensable with our lives. It is obvious that smartphones have made our lives more fun and productive and nobody will ever disagree with that.

However, have you ever heard of miraculous medicine that is applicable to anyone in pain and free from side-effects? No, there isn’t such a thing as panacea. Apparently, nowadays people are so into the smartphone world that they seem to see nothing but good things about smartphones. People with cold should take pills for cold, not for cancer. If you take pills for cancer, it would be financially overburden to you. Also patients with any disease should not take a certain amount of pills, and it should not be overdosed. These three metaphorical statements are the reasons why I stand up on the opposite side of people applauding smartphones.

Thanks to developed functions of smartphones, smartphones are considered ‘mobile office’, and hours of work is kind of extended unofficially and it is very much annoying for many people. Imagine that you are finally off the day and your fun loving wife or husband and children are waiting for you. Then, you go through all the traffic war on the road and arrive at the entrance of Heaven. At the same time, you get e-mails from boss saying that you have to make a presentation or come up with some kick-ass ideas or bring the boss reports that look impossible to finish tonight. What choices do you have? No other choices, just jump on working. When you have finished, your cute children are asleep, and your wife is looking pissed off. Don’t freak out yet. it’s not that it happens today only, but it will happen endlessly. Happy? It really is the true meaning of the ubiquitous world, isn’t it?

It is either unreasonably expensive to use smartphones or unwanted service for some people. A couple of days ago, I got to watch news on MBC saying that KT had terminated its 2G service. KT has adopted a very special win-win strategy, and it will boost our economy. What a wonderful news is this? So we can use 3G and LTE(Long-Term Evolution) more comfortably. It’s like stressless driving  on empty high way. Wow, it’s truly amazing. However, What about previous 159,000 KT 2G users? Of course, they need to use 3G or 4G cell phones as of the announcement day. 2G users on the edge of cliff are literally forced to buy unwanted expensive smartphones that some of them don’t even know how to use properly. Oil price goes up, bus and subway fares increase, electricity, and gas, I can’t even finish listing all those things whereas our salary stays the same. It’s just great.

“As Apple grew, we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me. As visions of the future began to diverge, our board of directors sided with him. At 30 I was out.” Steve Jobs said in the commencement at Stanford in 2005. Smartphones are supposed to bring productivity to us. And it is true that they have brought efficiency and productivity to the world, and yet it is partially true. In reality, as the statistics show, almost 80 percent of employees and students use SNS, shopping, and games on smartphones during the time they are supposed to focus on work or study. I can’t wait to work in a company where I can spend most of the time sneaking out with my smartphone, and have fun during working hours, and still take salary from the company.

Admittedly, it is nice to carry around cutting-edge technology in my hand, and I can do pretty much everything with a smartphone. However, it is hard to see people with the exact same life style. We are all different and priceless and should be treated as importantly as possible. Therefore, that KT made the decision of 2G termination with no compensations at all fiercely pushes many people into a corner. Moreover, we need to be aware of the difference between using smartphones wisely to be able to remain efficient and productive and being addicted to using them resulting in high possibilities of putting ourselves in stressful situations or less productivity which is supposed to be the other way around.