The Final Countdown

Last paper/presentation due tonight.

Finals start Wednesday.

Let the countdown begin!

[Too bad I'm taking summer classes all during June, haha]

Stop and Smell the Roses.

I wrote this blog for my e-Business class and figured I'd post it since we were just supposed to write it in Word and print it, haha. Feedback is welcome.

Aside from the environmental advantages, what is society’s infatuation with technology? We are constantly on our phones, laptops, and MP3 players relying on them for our music, news, entertainment, and communication. E-mail and Facebook has replaced Pen Pals, Hulu has replaced watching shows on your TV, texting has replaced phone calls, and MP3s have replaced CDs.

Millions of people every day are connecting to the internet through both their portable devices and cell phones. The availability of internet service through Wi-Fi hotspots and 3G and 4G services allows people to browse the web anywhere, anytime.

Need to find out what’s playing in theaters? There’s an app for that. The iTunes App Store offers a variety of movie apps, with the most popular being “Movies by Flixter”, which not only tells you what’s in the theaters, where the nearest ones are, theater information including show times and if you can buy tickets. It even uses Yelp to tell you what restaurants are nearby.

Cell phones have been transformed into mini computers. After the iPhone came out I always said that I would never get a phone like that because I had a computer, and that I didn’t need a phone and a computer all in one. Just last month I found myself upgrading my LG Dare to the Droid Eris, and paying $30 more a month just so I could enjoy the benefits of Verizon’s 3G service. And I must say, I love everything about the phone. I love the fact that if I’m not near a computer that I can look something up in a matter of seconds. My TomTom has become obsolete thanks to Google Maps and I even have the ability to use my phone to provide Wi-Fi connectivity to my laptop on bus rides to Philly.

In cnet’s news article “More people buying Wi-Fi-enabled devices”, author Lance Whitney says “portable gadgets with Wi-Fi are in hot demand and expected to get hotter.” Whitney also quotes Frank Dickson who says “Wi-Fi swept through the computing market, driven by the need to access and share broadband connectivity.” Laptops, iPods, printers, gaming devices, and even picture frames come with and use Wi-Fi technology, providing users with many more opportunities than before. You can wirelessly print something from your iPod to your printer and surf the web on your laptop at the local coffee house. We all want to be connected at any point in our day, no matter where we are.

What is going to become of us? Will we be a product of technology instead of technology being a product of us? As guilty as I am of all this, I think it’s about time that we all unplug and go for a walk sans technology.