As I was leaving a downtown meeting yesterday, I saw a women running a hot dog cart. That in and of itself wasn’t interesting but what caught my eye was that she was intently checking her smartphone, oblivious to the hustle and bustle around her.
It got me thinking about what life was like before smartphones? How did we fill in the small gaps between meetings, during coffee breaks or lunch, waiting in line-ups for groceries or movies, commuting or stuck in traffic?
Today, many people instantly reach for their smartphones to check e-mail, watch videos, surf the Web or play games. While these devices are terrific, what’s been lost in the process? Are we reading fewer newspapers? Are we reading fewer newspapers? Are we spending less think time just thinking with no distractions?
There is a price to be paid for using a smartphone because the time it consumes means that something else has to give. For the gains they offer, there is also a balancing loss.
I know exactly what I did. There is a pile of three years worth of sf magazines and novels that I keep buying because I intend to get through them one of these days. The fact that the pile up started when I got my first smartphone is no coincidence.
Mark that is a really good question and honestly, being a realtor trainer and real estate agent myself I do not know what I would do without my smartphone!
It’s kind of like the same question, what did we do before television remote controls were invented? Well, if I remember correctly we got UP and changed the channel!
You have to wonder if in this day and age are we just getting to spoiled or has the fast pace of life become so stressful that we all need these gadgets and widgets to save us time thus making our lives a bit less hectic. One might argue that these devices in fact have made their lives MORE complicated now! I hear that a lot.
An agent just the other day in my real estate office said, “Amy, do you get text messages from your clients”? I said oh yes all the time. She was shocked and asked if I texted them too of course I said yes. I told her many of my clients are business men and women that are at the office or in meetings and the best way for me to not bother them but get a message to them is via text messaging. She was floored but I convinced her to start practicing how to send an SMS.
Also, I have to be quite honest, when I moved, I was in another part of my state that I was accustomed to and as a realtor, of course I had to know the area quite well, so without the aid of my GPS I would have been in BIG trouble not knowing how to get to a home to show or a listing appointment etc.
I love my gadgets and as long as I can keep up with the ever changing technology
I think we will be better off using them.