The Sonance Behind My Silence

     When my friends asked me to download WhatsApp some years ago, I had never thought that the green icon would soon be part and parcel of the smartphones of almost 450 million people. The app is quick, easy to use, and attractive and is downloadable free for everyone except iOS users. All-in-all, it is a really convenient to use fun app which does away with the woes and fluctuating rates of SMS, pervading the barriers of distance. As long as you have access to internet and a smartphone, no one can stop you from staying in touch with everyone.      But have you ever wondered how this company makes money? One way that is the most obvious, of course, is the subscription fee that it charges its users. WhatsApp allows its users to enjoy the services for free for the first year after installation. However, after that it charges $0.99 for continued service. But till date, I have not heard of a single person who has paid for this extension of servi...

     It is said that we live in an era of smart phones and dumb people. Is it true? The better and more sophisticated our mobile phones get, the more we tend to depend on them. Mobile phones have made the ability to remember phone numbers extinct. Who would go through the ordeal of remembering 10 digits per person when they are just a few ‘touches’ away? The routine of calling people to wish them on their birthdays has also been replaced by an SMS or a WhatsApp text. But getting to a serious alteration to the human ‘smartness’ because of a smartphone, we see a considerable reduction in memory and retention capacity of people who use smartphones extensively. Forgetfulness is the order of the day, and we often miss out on important events and things because of forgetting them.      How often do we wish that everything we lose had a ringtone attached to it? How convenient will it be to find something just by means of that very smartphone that is re...