21st Century Digital Boy

There is a sarcastic story in the Foreign Service that says you can identify when someone joined by guessing the approximate date of their current fashion. As horrible as it may sound, we just don't always know what's new, not because we get older and lazier about catching trends, but because we're far away, dealing with things--like how to get to work, or survive blistering heat--that don't concern the average American impulse shopper.

When I lived in Silicon Valley, it was a matter of normal lunchtime cafeteria banter for me to pick up the basics about the latest whizbang gizmo to hit the market, driving people to part with hundreds of dollars for something with a 90-minute battery life. I would usually chuckle politely, learn enough to keep myself from embarrassment at the next party, but distance myself and my wallet in the most elegantly Luddite fashion possible. Even living in Monterey, I could absorb enough information passively so as to never think about how I'd keep up.

But now, I'm not only removed from these things intellectually, I live in a place where the newest handheld device just doesn't garner enough attention to compete with other headlines. So, when a friend slyly laid the new-fangled iPhone on the table at lunch today, gone was any previous facade of cool disinterest--it was more like kids on Christmas morning, playing with the settings and pressing as many buttons as possible. That little thing does everything. It's great, it fits in your hand, I wouldn't surprised if it could beam you (for a small fee, of course) from one part of the galaxy to the other. And that's when I knew I'd been away from the hype long enough that I could create and enjoy it myself.