My interest in computers was kindled early in my childhood. I am approaching the age of 31 years and thus my memories from over 20 years ago are fading. I do remember several moments relevant to my developing interest in computers:

• Together with my mother, I visited a few times a friend of hers, and played on the PC with her daughter. My favourite game that she had was DX-Ball, a Breakout type game; we also browsed the Web. These could be the first times I played a video game or went on the Internet.
• I'm not sure how they managed, but my parents got me my first computer pretty early on. I don't remember much about it, but it was an IBM PC in horizontal case placed on the desk top, (so it was truly a Desktop) and had about 20GB of storage. I remember having a gaming console too, with games such as Duck Hunt, Battle City, and Mega-Man. Of course, the console was some kind of clone, and the games were clones or at least illegal copies.
• My uncle Gabi — who is actually not much older than me — was a student at the Automatică & Calculatoare college in Bucharest and knew a lot about the technology that fascinated me. He helped me build my next PC and provided me with amazing games and software. Years later, I decided to follow behind his steps and was admitted at the same college. I knew that it wouldn't be easy, especially given that I had to be on my own away from home. Thus, he was undeniably a big influence in my personal and professional development.
• Even before beginning the formal study of computer programming and IT&C in high-school, I tried to teach on my own how to code and wrote my first programs in the 7th or 8th grades. The programs are sadly lost to time, but I remember precisely that they were GUI application made in Visual Basic 6: a program that demonstrated Kaprekar's constant, and a scoring program for Snooker.

Despite my continuous fascination with computers, the invention of the smartphone did not interest me that much. I enjoyed playing games on my friends' phones at school, but I was very reluctant to get one for myself. My last "dumb" phone was a Nokia 6500 slide, and I was pretty happy with it. Apart from handling calls and SMS, it could take decent photos, play music and radio, and wake me up in the morning. My first smartphone was an Allview which I bought not long before I left for Bucharest to begin my university studies. I think the reason was that I was moving to the big city, away from my Desktop PC and my family. I needed thus a few tools to help me, especially a maps application.

I maintained this technological skepticism ever since. To give only a few examples: I prefer wired devices to wireless ones; I have a mechanical watch instead of a smart watch; I don't participate in "social" networks; I avoid "smart" devices and home automation; I have yet to make use of the modern generative AI beyond the work environment and some isolated use cases (although I do intend to setup a local model); etc. The question is why this seemingly selective skepticism? Essentially, I think the answer lies in how I am much more conservative when it comes to weighing the benefits against the drawbacks of new technologies compared with what preceded them. That is, I place more value on aspects that most people ignore. We will perform this analysis exercise on some of the foregoing examples, but first, let's enumerate some general, common issues.

Coming back to computers (desktops and laptops) vs. smartphones, let's start by comparing them with what came before.

Computers as general purpose computing devices don't really have a single predecessor, as they have many different uses. However, I think it's reasonable to say that the main, most general use case is information processing. For most of modern and even ancient history, there was paper, cardboard, and various mechanical devices that helped us create written works and perform calculations faster. Compared to these now ostensibly "ancient" technologies, a computer is a revolutionary, miraculous invention that allowed us to process information at massive scales, and opened up endless possibilities, like digital graphics and video games. Basically everything intangible can be encoded as information in some way, making it subject to realm of computation. The downsides are obvious, but in my view, they don't tip the scales: they do need electricity, they are composed of extremely sophisticated electronics, some of which can only be built by a few companies in the world, and they require a connection to the Internet to access the vast troves of information stored online.

Smartphones, on the other hand, are simply a cellphone and a tiny computer combined (we can also include a camera for good measure). They are a worse cellphone because they are bigger and more uncomfortable to hold to your ear or keep in your pocket. They are also a much worse computer because they have such a small screen, they don't have a real keyboard, you can't change their internal hardware or easily connect peripherals. It is very difficult to change even the operating system in the event that you want to escape the tight grip of the Apple–Google duopoly. You have to accept all this to get only one but sometimes important benefit: mobility. You can't take your desktop with you on vacation to send pictures to your grandmother, and even a laptop is inconvenient to carry around. Hence using a smartphone is justified only to the extent we require mobility. If I'm in another country, sure, I will buy tickets and look up information online on the smartphone, but squinting at a tiny screen on the street if I can wait to get home where I have a full-blown desktop is ridiculous.

There is also the argument that the ubiquity of smartphones made the young people today fall behind when it comes to digital skills, since the user interface on a phone hides a lot of the complexity of a computer environment. For instance, the notion of a hierarchical file system is pretty much absent; you don't really work with files and folders on a smartphone.

We are much too eager to accept and adopt new products and technologies, giving next to no regard to their negative consequences. I hoped I offered you some inspiration to better apply your faculty of deliberate choice (prohairesis). The foregoing considerations and examples can even be generalized to the adoption of new methods or new ways of getting something done. For instance, food or grocery delivery services are not really a new technology, but more of a new kind of business. In any case, the questions we should ask ourselves are:

• Why would this be better than what I have now?
• Do the advantages correspond to real needs that I have?
• What are the disadvantages?
• Are these downsides worth the hassle of switching from the old thing?
• Are these needs so important that I have to accept these downsides?