Seeing as I’m typing this from a mobile device, this might be entirely appropriate to talk about.
You know you’ve got friends who are technophobes. Clutching their physical newspapers in hand, still talking on a phone that looks like and is consequently the size of a dinosaur, they look fearfully at your cool ultraslim laptops and iPhone as if they were devices spawned in hell.
There isn’t anything wrong with this. Frankly these folks are the reason we geeks have jobs. But it becomes different when they choose to judge you for being too obsessed with being connected.
I wouldn’t be too concerned with this. I mean, without geeks having a minimum of 4 techie devices, how would people look up directions when they’re lost? How would people be able to keep their shutin friends updated through Twitter every two seconds about their latest bowel movement? Heck, how would we be able to keep ourselves amused during a long trip with stuff about things only we care about while evryone else pretends to listen?
Sure, geeks seem to have their faces buried in their computers or the latest Apple nerdgasm toy. But honestly, would you rather have techies distracted by shinies, or bored antisocials awkwardly hitting on someone way out of their league and embarrassing you at the bar? Pick you poison.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve pissed off the mechanic looking at my iPod touch like it’s an alien death ray enough.