One year on, time to ramble

Today marked the end of an era, well not quite but I shipped my iPhone 3G off to its new owner so as of now I am a phoneless man. I haven’t been without a phone for over 10 years but prior to the iPhone I don’t think that not having a phone would have bothered me too much.

The iPhone is my go to device for everything and probably gets used far more than any other phone I’ve had.

Need to find somewhere, don’t ask someone, just use google maps

Need to find the nearest store, don’t ask someone, just use yelp

Want to catch up with your friends, don’t call them, use facebook

Casual browsing, chess games, keeping track of my runs, sharing it with everyone (regardless if the content is missed among the Digital cacophony), random app purchases.

The list goes on and on and on and on

I think I share too much, perhaps that’s due in part to my work from home job, which by its very nature implies a removal from normal day to day social interaction. By putting so much of myself online I am reestablishing a connection with textual representations of people, even if the connection is tenuous at best.  I’m not complaining, I am grateful for twitter and facebook as it keeps me sane to a small degree but I am interested to see how these next two weeks go by (24th is iPhone 4 launch date), I suspect not much will change as I’m not expected to be away from home for any great length of time.

I am supposed to get the iPhone 4, its the logical choice but I can safely say that no phone out at the moment has that WOW factor, that instant kill, instant sell factor. Perhaps I won’t get it, perhaps I could simply not replace it or get a simple phone. Learn to communicate and search out things without telling anyone remove the digital crutch and find out whether technology is the great empowerer that I believe it is.

I do believe it, I do .

But this is an unusual situation I’ve always had the next phone lined up, like a junkie, ready prepared. Do I really need twitter and Facebook? Probably not, in fact definitely not are they distraction masquerading as aids? Possibly.

Perhaps I’m just going through the 7 stages of grief.  Why? Because the iPhone was my first smart phone and because I’m one of many sad people that ascribe far too much to a digital device.

Screw it, I’m going to find a phone box, can some one text me the……..