new morning ritual by ekelly80
Last night I had a dream about a series of iPhone apps that would manage all of my day to day duties, organize my thoughts into coherent text messages and e-mails, add events to my calendar as soon as my eyes saw them online, and create to-do lists on the fly: do laundry, breathe deeply, blink. In the dream my brain stem had an iPhone dock surgically attached to it, allowing me to become one with my beloved device and freeing my mind from doing anything useful whatsoever. My phone knew exactly what I was thinking, suggested alternative thoughts related to my own, and maintained a database of my activity in its flash memory. As time went on, the app learned what I liked and disliked, what my daily schedule consisted of, what kind of food I generally ate, and eventually took over all brain function. Thanks to the newly added multitasking feature of the operating system my phone could do many things at once, like set my DVR to record Dancing With the Stars, Twitter about how much of an idiot Sarah Palin is, and order ice cream from Peapod. It was all encompassing, essentially living my life for me. Of course the competition was working around the clock to introduce the same surgical procedure and an identical app for the Droid, and it was likely that in a few years Microsoft would introduce something very similar with a clever marketing campaign.
As I awoke from my dream I laughed at how silly it was, as if a device could completely rule my world. I reached across the bed and found a warm empty space where my wife normally was. That’s strange, where could she be? I grabbed my phone from the nightstand and sent her a text: “where r u?” She replied, “need buzz – latte?” Just then the calendar on my phone chirped: “9:00 AM – morning w/ wife @ sbux.” I texted back, “o rite. b rite there.” We both grabbed our iPads and headed out the door, checking our e-mail and TweetDeck as we walked down the street. My wife mumbled, “Did you see @ABC_DWTS’s tweet about Bristol Palin?” “I know, she totally should have won, unlike her stupid mom in ’08,” I said. We grabbed our pumpkin lattes and sat down across from each other. “Did you remember to buy ice cream?”
