I went to have coffee with a friend this afternoon. With an impending change coming to his life, it was good to see old friends. Well, ifyou know each other since junior high school, you're old friends. He had just come back from a vacation in Japan not too long ago. He was utterly amazed by the sheer number of commuters taking public transportation, the waiting, and more waiting. All in all, he had a great time there with his family.
We also hear about Japan bring a nation of cell phone users with some of the most sophisticated mobile devices in the world. Well, seeing is believing and he saw a lot of folks with a cell phone in their face, surfing away, listening to music, or reading the latest novel. They did it while waiting for the trains, riding on the trains, and even during lunch as they thumb away on the keypads. Small talks were kept to a minimal. In fact, he almost never see people talking to each other on the trains.
Can we ever do that here in the US? I am already relying on my iPhone for a lot of e-mailing and generally keeping in touch with the world. But replacing my laptop?
I doubt I'll be able to do it with my Samsung Trace but I might be able to with a smartphone or a device like my iPhone. But there are still a lot of things in my work that can only be accomplished on a laptop. However, I do see this as a challenge.
Maybe I won't be able to write a whole novel on a phone as some Japanese writers have done, but I can give relying even more on my mobile devices a try.
Note: a friend and I are exploring putting on the Internet tales of our old RPG games and other sci-fi or fantasy musings from when we were kids. Perhaps, with a few exceptions, we should contemplate using only mobile devices and see what we learn from this experiment.
Sent from my iPhone
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