This Blog Was Written From An iPhone

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Something happened this week that is going to change our daily lives. No, I’m not pregnant… yet. It is something seemingly less dramatic, but something that nonetheless will change our lives.

We bought new mobile phones. For me, it was the new iPhone 3G. For Tom, it was the Samsung Blackjack, which is admittedly very much like my old Motorola Q. There is no denying that my phone is cooler, but we are both taking it one step at a time, immersing ourselves in a new culture, a culture we were both reluctant to join and surely will come to embrace.

Welcome to the Connected Masses
As soon as Tom set up e-mail on his Samsung, as soon has he began to put bookmarks into his mobile browser, I knew it was all over for him. He had entered into the world of the always connected. No longer would there be online time and offline time. With internet and e-mail always at your side, the lines blur, the worlds collide. You are always connected.

This is a world that I have been part of for quite some time, but only truly embraced about a year ago. I had worn down the keys of my Motorola Q. It had become an appendage. But I had outgrow it. I needed more… more efficiency… more applications. I was already connected, I wanted a cultural revolution. I didn’t want the internet all the time, I wanted it infused into my lifestream.

Forced into the iCult
When I had first decided that it was time to get a new phone, I had all but decided on the Google Android. I had ruled the iPhone out, because I have never felt part of Apple culture and had figured that many of the perks of the phone would only benefit those already immersed in the iCult.

But, several months went by and the reports of the iPhone App Store awesomeness grew, while the launch date of Android pushed further and further into the distance. I couldn’t wait any longer. So on Wednesday of this week, my husband spent an excruciatingly long time at Best Buy purchasing and setting up our new phones.

As he walked through the door with my phone, I wasn’t like a giddy child on Christmas day. It was like an alien object. I kept blogging, I kept working, while the black monolith sat there on the desk waiting to be played with.

Once I started, I got into the hang of it pretty easy. I immediately went to the App Store and began downloading all of the apps I had been reading about for the past many months. As the screens began to fill up with icons, I realized how easy and addicting it was, this could become trouble.

I Shalt Not Act Like a Douche
It had been sitting in the back of my mind for weeks, and now it was reality. I was marked as part of a culture with this phone, would this be something I would come to love or hate? I’m not sure even now. But, when I walked through the doors of my work the next day, I can tell you one thing… I was definitely iPhone shy.

I didn’t want to whip it out and show it off. I didn’t even really want to talk about it. It still was that foreign object, friendly but foreign. But, like it or not… the comments came. “Oh, so you got the new iPhone.” “Wait, I thought you were going to get the Android.” “Hey, since when do you have an iPhone?”

It’s nothing bad, it’s nothing even meaningful. But I was now one of those iPhone people.

Our New “Connected” Lives
The change in our lives was never so apparent as when Tom and I had dinner together yesterday. We were on the road and decided to take a detour by 6 mile to see if there were any new restaurants. We didn’t see any, but when I pulled up my Urban Spoon application and found a highly rated restaurant hidden in the back of the strip.

We sat down, enjoyed some snacks, ordered our drinks, and then… the phones came back onto the tables. Off and on during the dinner the phones served as discussion points. Places to look up information, and places to even record information about the wines we were drinking. I wouldn’t say there was ever a moment where my husband and I were distracted from each others company. It was almost like there was another presence at the table. Like we were not eating alone.

At the end of the meal, my husband told the waiter/sommelier how we had almost missed coming here. I toyed with the idea of showing him my phone, until the urge was just too strong. I had to pull it out and show him the Urbanspoon and how well rated the restaurant was. He had thought it was cool, but didn’t really grasp what I was trying to show. Without being “always connected”, my husband and I would not have even dined there tonight, we would have had a total different experience.

And so that is why I say that it is just that… Something happened this week that is going to change our daily lives. It’s going to change vacations, it’s going to change just sitting around our house in our pajamas. It’s going to change the way we have dinners. It’s going to change the way my husband and I connect to each other.

Don’t believe me, just read this awesome New York Times article, Brave New World of Digital Intimacy - I’m So Totally, Digitally Close To You.