I fear I’m missing the future. It’s my phone, you see.

I have a basic level phone from AT&T — sliding model, tiny keys, no Internet — and I’m starting to wonder if I’m stuck in the past.

As more and more of my friends acquire the popular iPhone, along with others like the Android phones and the HTC Evo series, I find myself more and more impressed with the level of technological advancement. Is there any other device that improves, in seemingly every metric, year to year, as do cell phones?

Futurist thinker Ray Kurzweil wrote in his 2005 book, The Singularity is Near, that technological progress is approaching exponential growth, meaning at some point in the near future technology will change faster than we can imagine, and in the end, man and machine will combine into something new, powerful and even immortal. He called that moment the “singularity.”

I fear I’m going miss the singularity because I won’t pay an extra $5 a month.

But I’m not sure that is such a bad thing. If Kurzweil is even remotely correct, we’re all about to live through some wild times. I think I’d like to relish the present before the future gets here.

This year NASA retired the venerable and stately shuttle program, closing a heavy book of incredible discoveries and achievements.

But at the cost of billions of dollars, this technology may take some time and may require that our economy recovers further.

If there is any item that fits Kurzweil’s model of exponential growth, it’s the smartphone. It’s like some boundary has been passed, and the level of connection and access to virtually all information has become desired — even needed — by many.

In contrast to the difficulty of funding massive programs, such as the space shuttle, smartphones have the popularity of the people, and the companies that create the networks and phones can pour money into research. The competition between companies (including the entire computer industry) has created a race I don’t think we’ve seen since, well, NASA went up against the Russians to get to the moon.

Instead of reaching for the stars, we’ve focused inward, on databases of information at our fingertips, on social networks and facilitating human connection and collaboration.

Maybe I like the way things are.

I just got texting this year, and I’ve really enjoyed the utility of it. And I even make phone calls, sometimes. Incredible, I know.

On some level, I want to savor the days of some semblance of separation, that I’d have to put some effort into making personal connections with others.

Now, both I and my high horse (I shall call him Silver) know the above sentiment may sound plausible. But I know the truth, and I’m confident that if I had an Android or an Evo, I would be on it all day. And I would love it.

I can’t stop time, and to do so on some principle of sentiment is difficult to defend rationally.

Would I refuse Prometheus’s fire, explaining that I really do like dark, cold nights, and it would be a shame just to throw that away?

So I’ll enjoy the silence of my remedial phone and bide my time; I bet the iPhone 7 is going to awesome.

_Danny is a junior in Media._