The iPhone

Now I don't know what affect this little device has had on the rest of the country, but it's become all the rage in San Francisco. To be perfectly honest, iPhones scare me. It's too much power for any one person to posess!

My boyfriend and his friends all have iPhones now, and I'm still sporting my $20 Nokia without so much as a camera on it. I'm a girl of simple taste, and don't quite see the purpose in having a phone that does anything other than making and receiving phone calls. Perhaps I'm too old-fashioned.

Just the other day, I was sitting in a pub with my boyfriend and about five other friends... everone was drinking virtual beers on their iPhones. No joke, you can actually drink a virtual beer with the iPhone.

Apparently, San Francisco is trying a new system for parking, where they are putting motion sensors on parking spots all over the city so that people with iPhones can check for which parking spots are available as they're driving around. San Francisco is the first city to try this, and plans to eventually have every parking spot in the city covered.

What scares me about this new technology is that Americans are already spending too many hours a day in front of their computer screens, checking e-mails and MySpace and Facebook and YouTube and everything else.

My parents call me every day, concerned for my little sister because she comes home from school, locks herself in her bedroom, and remains glued to her computer until bedtime. Now that people are basically carrying portable computers around in their pockets, is it only a matter of time before real human interaction is a thing of the past? My roommate sends me texts and e-mails from his bedroom to my bedroom across the hall so he doesn't have to get up. This is only the beginning!

Now I realize the irony of downtalking computer use on a website of all things, in a virtual newspaper article. And yes, I am also guilty of overusing the computer, though I try to keep my computer use to a minimum. I use the computer to edit films, check e-mail, and to do other business-related things, as well as updating my PNN page. Aside from editing, I spend maybe 1-2 hours on the computer a day. But I look forward to leaving the apartment, and leaving the world of technology behind. Carrying all of that with me would be like always being on-call.

I was brainstorming on a cute idea for a short comedy about iPhones. It would look like an anti-drug campaign commercial, only it would be anti-iPhone. We would open with a young woman in tears, sniffling, "Rob and I were engaged to be married. We were going to tie the knot this Fall... (sniffle) and then he got... (sniffle) an iPhone. I didn't think it was a big deal at first... he told me he'd only use it for work! After a month, it was like I didn't even exist..." and various other interviews about people who have lost their lives to the iPhone. I could call it "iPhone... dun dun DUNNN!"