Technology - The Battle of the Bytes

Hi. I'm Mike, and I'm a Facebookaholic.

I discovered Facebook not too long ago, at the suggestion of some of my creative writing students. "It's great," they would tell me, "you can do all kinds of stuff."

"And what kind of 'stuff' might we be talking about here?" I would ask, in my very best imitation of Mrs. Gadomski, the severe and ancient (probably ten years younger than I am now) high school Latin teacher who inspired me to strive for greatness as an educator, and who triggered many hours of speculation among a few of us students as to what kind of man would be up to the challenge of being "Mr. Gadomski."

My gang of young Shakespeares are every bit as persistent they are creative, so they eventually convinced me to give Facebook a try.

I just got a "Tweet" from Barack Obama - me and 111, 829 of his closest friends. Make that 111,831; two more people started "Following" him while I was writing the previous sentence. Whoops, 111,837.

Barack sends me a Tweet to let me know whenever he is about to give a stump speech. I also get up-to-the-minute news flashes from CNN and NPR. And twelve minutes ago I found out that Maggie Mason in San Francisco (8,127 Followers) doesn't get much exercise in "the muscles you use to whip your head from side to side when dancing with tequila in hand."

You gotta love the twenty-first century!

I need your advice.
 
Last week I got an e-mail from my cell phone company, telling me that it was time to get myself a new phone. They seem really eager to send one along, absolutely free, if I will just agree to send them back a large check every month for the next two years.
 
How could anyone pass up a deal like that?
 
I probably should mention that the phone I have now is working just fine. And I’m still discovering things it can do – like download stock quotes in real time, or fly a fully-loaded Boeing 747.

Last week I wrote about my experience with GPS technology. Well, I heard from quite a few readers who had similar stories to share, along with one person who wanted to inform me that GPS does not stand for "Going Pathetically Slow. It seems the device is actually named in honor of Gwendolyn Peabody Snuffbox, who was a key member of a research team responsible for developing something they liked to call a "global positioning system."

I stand corrected.

I also received this comment:

I enjoyed reading about your experience with the GPS, but I have to say that it serves you right. Why can't you just navigate the old fashioned way – with MapQuest?

Signed,

A Traditionalist

Hey, news flash! I have a GPS in my cell phone!

Now, my guess is that your response to that opening will pretty much sort you out by age.  If you are under about thirty, it was probably, "Well, duh!" If you are anywhere between thirty and fifty, the chances are you said to yourself, "Interesting. Maybe mine does too. I think I'll go check." And if you're around my age, over fifty, you probably were thinking something like, "Geeze, I don't remember applesauce giving me so much gas!"

For those of you who are not real familiar with this bit of twenty-first century technology, a GPS is a device that can show you exactly where you are on the planet. And, if you let it know where you want to go, it can tell you how to get there. Kind of like a map, only it makes an odd sort of "crunching" sound if you fold it up wrong.