Fantastic New App Lets People Talk to Each Other

There's this new app, fantastic,
that allows your phone to converse
with another person's phone.
Or several phones may chat
in a mingling group. Of course,
the phones have a lot to talk about--
a bad night's sleep-mode, soreness
from data-storage, the stress
of being shifted to another plan.

Anyway, while the phones talk,
you and another person or you
and several people may do whatever
you want together, including talk.  It'll be
great because your phones won't
be there. So for instance you
can focus your eyes on the other
person, and your fingers
and thumbs won't have to dance
frenetically like a weaving spider's legs.
I'm telling you it's an amazing app.


hans ostrom 2016

"Now That Phones Are With Them," by Hans Ostrom

 ("Is this a good time to call?" --Old Saying)


Now that phones are with them,
everywhere and always,
it is always
and never a good time to call. Life,
a series of interruptions,
has become a shattered series

of interrupted, re-continued,
dis-directed ruptures. Like
a batty princess to a frog,
people speak loudly at something
in their palms.  Confused
courtiers look on.

One hand's fingers
tap like spiders' legs
on plasti-glass surfaces.
Apps become vats
into which to pour
attention. Heads bent,

faces slack, eyes distracted:
people's minds leave their
bodies to go to that other space,
that cloud which is forever
and presently calling.


--hans ostrom 2014

Phone as Phone

Telephone.
Tele-phone.
Telephonetics.

"Telephone!" we used to shout
"Phone--for you!"
"Somebody get that phone!"

And today someone
said to me, "Are you
saying that you use
your phone as a phone?"

And I confessed, yes,
"I don't use any of the
apps."



Hans Ostrom, 2013