Siri - How to I get to Greenwood Drive?

How much time do you think you spend on your smartphone?  I will not ask for just a phone since I am not sure those even exist anymore.  Do you use your smartphone for more than calling?  I am sure the answer is yes.  Is is getting harder to actually think about what our smartphones can't do.  We text, call, bank, travel remind, email, video call, check our health, serf the Internet and so much more.

I found myself with a phone that decided to stop working.  Hence, it seems that my life then stopped working.  No more connecting or checking on anything.  I was trying to learn from that moment how much I depended on my smartphone.  Within just a few hours (that may seem very long for some of you) I ordered a new phone.  Yes, I needed to order it and didn't go right out to buy one but that is a budget thing for me.  So for three days I am without my phone!  

This left me some extra time to think.  Since I could not listen to my book on my drive, or get any text from my family, I really thought about how much my life has changed in the past ten years of having a real augmented life.  I had made arrangements to stop by a friend's house to drop off a goodie after work and when I got to my car - I had no idea how to get to her house!  I would have looked it up on my phone, used my online maps and followed the directions.  Nope - did not happen.  I went back into the office to give her a call and get the directions.  She explained something very similar happened to someone she knew (more of a young adult in her 20s) that went to the beach,  her phone died and she could not get home and missed a meeting.  We discussed that back in the "day" we would have had an atlas in our car or stopped by the nearest gas station to ask for directions.  That did not happen for this young women - she did not really have an alternate plan of what to do.

Our lives have completely changed with the rapid improvements in technology.  There is not an aspect of our lives that new innovations have not "augmented" our lives.  Some have either gone with the flow or resisted these changes.  I am one that may approach new technologies cautiously but then once I am there  - there is no going back.  I am librarian and tech coach for an elementary school and I can see first hand how with budget constraints that our students are missing out on some technologies that are available.  For example, we have laptop and desktops for students to use but our incoming kindergarten students only want to swipe at the screen.  We have to show them out to use a keyboard and a mouse!  This may seem a small thing but it is clear to me that our technologies are not equitable in all schools.  

This blog will be influenced by the book Augmented: Life in the Smart Lane by Brett King (2015).  It is already five years old and changes will continue to be made but it is interesting to see what he is predicting of our future augmented lives.  Technology changes everything.  I hope you will come back to see what we can discover about our future together.