Who here has a Smartphone

RantWoman has a friend who hesitates to admit he has a pickup truck because admitting one has a pickup truck tends to attract all sorts of "friends" who need to borrow the pickup truck. RantWoman is all about the possiblity that Smartphones are a new form of pickup truck. Much to the distress of Smartphone vendors and wireless broadband inundation enthusiasts, RantWoman would like to embrace this as a GOOD thing, on community-building grounds at least.

RantWoman has lots of granola-eating, fluorescent bikewear-wearing, highly educated, ecologically conscious friends who decidedly DO NOT OWN the latest in mobile geekware and are quite happy about it Thank you very much. RantWoman herself has an embarrassing abundance of outworn non-functional geekware. RantWoman also has enough geekware envy to put her well above the median of her close circle as far as electronic enthusiasm. And RantWoman is all about Smart phones as community-building tool.

For example, RantWoman was once at a meeting with mostly people younger and much more hip to Smartphone than she. At some point she realized that, while she herself was oblivious as to ways to access One Bus Away on her decidedly not-Smart granny phone, it would be perfectly sensible just to inquire of one of the Smartphone wielding youths fluttering their fingers around her.

Recently RantWoman was hanging around her house of worship. One couple needed directions to somewhere new. RantWoman assessed those nearby and guessed odds were pretty good that someone has a Smartphone.

Who here has a Smartphone?

Sure enough. A Smartphone was produced. The desired coordinates were entered. Some additional orienters were offered from someone with real space experience in the area, and the inquiring couple set off, uncharacteristically in their car instead of on their bicycles.

RantWoman has a similar story from a couple summers ago. RantWoman and a large number of her friends were more or less a convoy of cars returning west on I-90 from an event in Montana. Different members of the convoy were in touch by cellphone. People wanted to stop for supper at a wonderful Mexican restaurant in Moses Lake. Wonderful restaurant in Moses Lake is not on a straightforward path from the freeway exits, but someone in ONE of the several cars had a Smartphone. The needed routing good looked up and conveyed to multiple cars. Score! The convoy had just spent all weekend going to events together in MT and the weekend spirit definitely lingered, thanks also to adept communications.

Lest RantWoman's readers be tempted to put TOO much confidence in Smartphones though, another time RantWoman was in a car that pulled off eastbound I-90 in response to a sign advertising Taco Time. The fact taht RantWoman was in the navigator seat MAY have had something to do with our car driving right past the restaurant on the first pass off the freeway. Then a Smartphone was produced and asked to help us locate the nearest Taco Time.

Utah?

Mercifully we achieved contact with the desired veggie soft taco variations and did not even have to go to Utah.

Now about educational matters. One of RantWoman's cellphone minimizing friends says that among his students, Smartphones are considered "affordable luxuries." This friend is also vexed that the educational institution where he teaches thinks reading assignments should come in the kind of chunks that can be absorbed 3 minutes at a time. RantWoman as avid transit consumer can definitely relate to the short attention span and many interruptions to continuous thought, whether material is being read on a bus on an e-device or in some other kind of e-overdose spurts. But the fact that other people in RantWoman's life have Smartphones often enough makes RantWoman's life easier that she at least has brain space to think more about the educational future and information needs of the Smartphone set.