Blog On The Motorway Swan diving off the tongues of crippled giants

The Internet is your friend

Ellen has a new phone, and the response it has engendered in me has not been pretty.  It's one of those all-singing HTC Android phones that falls under the title 'smartphone.' And by Christ is it smart.  Up until I saw it I actually thought that my lovely LG phone that I have had for the past year was quite good.  It allowed me to look on the internet and everything.  Ellen's phone makes my LG look like a Jackson 5 reunion, absolutely surplus to requirement.  Added to this that the software is all Google, my online brand of choice, and it makes this new intruder into my home seem like a wanton hussy, flirting with me while my old phone sits in the corner of the room and weeps.

Now I don't intend to run through all the reasons that the HTC is so good, but trust me, it's every bit as nice as an iPhone, with the added benefit of you not looking a complete ballache by holding it. (Sorry Gray, couldn't resist) but it has gotten me thinking about just how much the internet has become a part of my life in the few short years since Jonic took me aside and really explained it all to me.  Right now if I had Ellen's phone I would be streaming music on my Spotify while scrobbling to my last.fm, updating my twitter and facebook in one swoop and reading the 60 odd blogs I have on my Google Reader.  And that's even before we get to the three websites I now run.

I honestly don't know how I would cope now, without the Internet.  I mean, I'm old enough to remember a time when there was no Internet, at least not for me.  For a good few years we just didn't have the net at home, and I didn't have access at work, and I was fine. Possibly had a bit more free time as well.  But the idea of never speaking to someone I have never met on twitter ever again, or discovering what new music is out there at the touch of a button, to not have these things now would terrify me.  And yet at the same time I know that I have barely scratched the surface of the wonderful world of the Internet.

At the same time, I do look at little Rosie and wonder exactly what this new interconnected world is going to mean to her.  Obviously, she's going to grow up an a house where information and connectivity are a big part of her world, and by the time she gets to school the world will no doubt have moved on dramatically once more.  It's an exciting time. But anyway, I don't really know where I am going with this, except to say that my envy of Ellen's new phone made me sit up and think hard about how dependent on the net I am these days, and how that seems to me to be a very positive thing.  As one of the readers of this here blog, you are a very big part of why I love it. So cheers.