Sunday Props – The Gizmo
Three days ago we celebrated Thanksgiving at Sarah’s parents house in Massachusetts. It also included a first-ever iChat with my grandmother in California, thanks to a little work by my cousin Lindsey, her laptop, and my grandmother’s speedy wireless internet. (Yes, that bears repeating: my grandmother has a fast wireless internet connection at her house.)
Chalk up another win for the gizmo, and the way gadgets help bring people together. It’s no secret that I love the gizmo. Wireless? Handsfree? Battery operated? Bring it on – especially if it helps communicate in more frequent, richer ways.
I should also disclose that I sometimes abuse technology – tech-free dinners take more discipline than I should need. And sometimes more discipline than I have.
But it’s true that few things in my life (distinguishing here from the people in my life) offer as much bliss as a good gizmo. Here are my top four:
- iPhone (6 pages of apps! Books! Slingbox! Podcasts!)
- MacBook (2 year old 2.2Ghz – the black one. Parallels! Quicksilver! VNC! TimeMachine!)
- Verizon Mifi (Wireless internet I can share anywhere (except my office, but that’s another story.))
- The “cloud” (Remember the Milk, Gmail(s) Google Reader! SugarSync! Mobile Me! CMS websites! Twitter!)
Of course having technology isn’t the point. Using technology it should be the point. I saw a illustration of this when I did a “tweet cloud” which analyzes the words I tweeted most often last year.
I hope I use technology to promote goodness (Canditto anyone?) and never to promote techno isolation. (Did anyone see this New Yorker cover at Halloween?)
So keep me honest friends, family and wayward blog readers. Hold me back if I ever take this stuff to the, errr, e-xtreme.