I have a different bent on this one, CT53, and my opinion is built in parts, drawing upon examples to best illustrate.
Part 1 - the net.
Recently, a panel including an FCC commissioner visited our fair city to hear from special interest groups and just plain folks on the subject of net neutrality.
I was particularly moved by one mom from one of our poorest neighborhoods who was proud that she could afford the $68/mon for access - but - very worried that without net neutrality, her access bill could rise above her means.
Is the net a luxury in this day and age?
One of things that our local school system has gone to is preferred communications by email and the web. If you're going to be late, if you're going to be absent and need to get assignments or turn one in - you use email first and foremost.
While we make various arguments about in my day and the net is a luxury - the practical truth here, in my opinion, is that disadvantaged children can grow up without a real competitive chance in a number of tomorrow's job markets, when so many of their peers have every opportunity to socialize and learn the tricks and the tools, if they lack access to reasonably-priced broadband services. (I'm not a bleeding heart - I'm practical. And dial-up isn't as good or even an alternative - in her neighborhood, the telephone infrastructure and wiring is not top-notch and error free, so dial-up isn't a matter of just slower. I know. I have a friend in that area that I worked with the phone company for three months to get her lines square for dial-up, and re-wired their house myself as a buddy -- so their kids could basic dial-up access and that was a decade ago.)
So - from a certain point of view, open to argument, perhaps the net itself is further from luxury than before. In her shoes, we'd make the same tough choices she's making, and every individual may feel differently. But I would submit that her drive to give her kids what they need to not live in poverty is a necessity from her point of view.
Part 2 - the phone.
You didn't question phones - you questioned smartphones - but let's just start at the basics.
Every parent rightfully dreads the possibility of getting an emergency call concerning their kid or a close family member. The only thing worse is being unreachable.
For those whose employment does not give them access to a phone - and there's a lot of those jobs, the cheap cell phone is a godsend. At today's pace, most would consider it a necessity. If too poor, a necessity to be sacrificed if absolutely required. But I would submit that children in poorer neighborhoods are more likely to come into harm's way than their better-off peers. You could try to tell a parent in those shoes, who's either received those calls or comforted her neighbor who has, that that cheap cell phone is not a necessity, but I'd suspect they'd look at you like you were from Mars. For many of them, it's the lifeline to the only stable thing they can count on in life - their family.
Part 3 - parenting.
3a. Do you know where your kids are? In concert with my Part 2, a parent carrying a cell phone gives a kid no excuse not to keep in touch.
3b. Do you know when your kids are surfing the net so you can control their behavior? Hand in glove with Part 1.
3c. Can you relate to your kids effectively to maintain guidance in _their_ view of the world.
Part 4 - putting together the hypothesis.
4a. The cheapest cell phone plan I could find on the net was $10/month and 25 cents/minute, all calls. Next, $20/month for 500 minutes, next the ever-popular and ubiquitous $30 plans.
4b. In this single example, one person pays $68/mo for broadband.
4c. From my quick on-line shopping sessions, and I can't claim I waded through all of the bait and switch windows correctly (thanks, carriers!), but I believe that with good data plans and pay-the-carrier-for-tethering (where available) the price seemed to round out at $100, up to $110 for a Sprint 4G (69.99+10+29.99hotspot). If we step outside of utopia, and just frankly admit that a lot of people use PDANet, for example, then unlimited data with tethering can be had for $70/month.
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Question - at $70 to $100/month (depending on reality or fully-legal choice), that parent gets a cell phone and broadband for the home PC. About the same that she pays for those things now while distributed across separate services. But for this, she also gets:
- More minutes, unlimited data
- Unconditional control of when her kids are using the internet (physical control of her phone)
- More savvy of net activities without hassling the PC herself, better to relate to her kids
- A digital camera and digital movie camera (upload to YouTube is free, after all)
- Texting and her own easy to use Gmail
- GPS for 911 calls
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So - there may be some holes in my setup, but I did my best.
Water and lights aren't luxuries, and therefore aren't automatically entitlements - they're necessities.
So let's go to the root of the question: luxury.
Under the scenario I laid out is a smartphone still a luxury, or can it be used as an effective technology-convergence tool to allow families to force-multiply their budgets for services they consider necessities or near-necessities?
I've created a hypothetical where the answer comes out that a smartphone need not be considered a luxury at all.
(I'll accept without arguing all criticism of the things I got wrong, like why doesn't she use a mobile broadband dongle, etc, not convenient to my case.
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Like so many things in life, this one wasn't as clear cut and dried for me as it once was.
And like so many of the interesting questions that occur in our digital lives now, where it's nearly 2011 and we're not in Kansas anymore, here's my answer to the question:
Is a smartphone with text and unlimited data a luxury?
My answer is that this depends entirely upon the circumstance of the individual.
I think that below the surface, this issue may not be as obvious as it seems at first glance.
Can't wait for feedback on this one!
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