There they were, thumbing away (June 8)
By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune
The brilliant people who design and market the digital devices most all of us live with are not unlike the people who figured out how to make crack cocaine. I’ve never had crack cocaine, but I understand that it will take over one’s life in nothing flat. One minute, you’re a normal person, and the next minute all you can think about is your next fix.
So it is with all the new gizmos.
I write this on a day that Apple has come out with a new iPhone, hot on the heels of the introduction of the iPad a couple of months ago.
People with iPhones, or Droids, or Blackberries seem not to be able to put them down.
I happened to be eating in a restaurant the other day, and noticed two fellows in the booth across from me thumbing their big cell phones. They weren’t making phone calls. They were texting, or playing games, or surfing the Internet. Something.
The waitress brought their food, and they pushed it aside so they could keep thumbing.
When the waitress came by to pour me some more coffee, I asked her, “Do you have Wi-Fi in here?”
“What’s that?” she asked.
“It’s something that lets you get on the Internet without plugging into the wall,” I said.
“Oh,” she said. “I think the place next door has something like that.”
The two guys still hadn’t started on their dinners. They were just thumbing. Maybe they were doing something important, but I think they just couldn’t put their gadgets down long enough to put food in their mouths. Like crack addicts, it was more important to them to keep satisfying their craving than it was even to eat a nice meal they had ordered.
Those two fellows aren’t alone. A lot of people just simply can’t keep their hands off those things. That’s why I’m kind of afraid to get one.
