Technology Corner: An Ode to a Modern Swiss Army Knife

The cellphone of today is the Swiss Army knife of my childhood. When I was a youth in Boy Scouts, I loved my Swiss Army knife. It had a blade for cutting and carving, a toothpick, a scissor, file, and a few other “apps” I can’t recall. As courts do not allow people to carry blades into the court house, my cellphone is my new Swiss Army knife.

Redundancy and backups: unlike my old knife, my cellphone data is backed up on a cloud storage system. If I lose it, I can get a new one and quickly replicate the data. It also has a GPS locator so I can find it from my IPad and make it play a sound so I can find it quickly. (Yes, I have used this feature quite a bit). I can also use it to do this:

1. Calculator with equation tracking;
2. Calendar;
3. Note taking;
4. Answer my video doorbell remotely;
5. View home security footage;
6. Track all of my social media feed;
7. Track business car miles;
8. Locate my kid;
9. Track my credit;
10. Track my health (calories in and out, weight, activities…);
11. Take pictures;
12. Find mountain biking trails (disclosure: most of my social media consists of law updates and my hiking and mountain bike trip photos).
13. Read magazine and get daily news briefings (learned today that the combined market value for the top 7 technology firms is $3.6 trillion…. That’s a lot of money… technology must be important)…
14. Oh… and there are real law applications, but that was the subject of an earlier column….

My newest Swiss Army knife is relegated to my biking/hiking backpack. It’s where I can find it if I need it, but it is largely forgotten, replaced by my phone. Oh, like the more advanced Swiss Army knife that had a built in penlight, my phone also has flashlight function. What more could a person want?

Technology Corner: An Ode to a Modern Swiss Army Knife