Stepping out of the Stone Ages…
This last weekend I was lucky enough to visit my brother in Austin, Texas, the youth magnet city which is extremely attractive to recent college graduates like me. I’ve always heard Austin is a lively, musically talented city for the young and restless although I didn’t know exactly what that meant, I was sure I’d soon find out.
Before I continue I should give you a little background on myself and the simple life I live, I still have an old school phone that is big, bulky and only calls and texts. My friends call it a “peasant phone” and they constantly remind me to upgrade to keep up with the times…
I know, I know, especially working for a social media company- by now, I should have crackberry, I mean, Blackberry and until my trip to Austin I did not realize how helpful having a phone with the internet and all the other apps would be! In the blink of an eye and the click of an app on my brothers iPhone, we were connected to the heart of Austin. All the events, restaurants, happy hour specials, festivals, game scores anything we would ever need to know about the city. It was amazing! The who, what, when, where and hows were all right at our fingertips making us feel like we were locals of Austin and not outsiders who were wandering the streets hoping to find something cool to do. We went to the UT vs Utep football game after tailgating at the oldest beer garden in Texas, Scholz Garten. After the game (without getting lost) we made our way to 6th street where the Pecan Street Festival was going on, we listened to great music and enjoyed the artwork of over 250 local artisans. Later in the night we were able to find restaurants with bands playing music we knew we’d enjoy, making it all around a great trip.
If you have an iPhone or Blackberry, this may not sound like a big deal to you because having access to the internet 24/7 is probably something you are used to. For me, this accessibility was an amazing feeling of being connected to choices that may not have been available to us had we not had my brothers iphone. It makes me wonder, what did my parents do when they were my age?
Technology is advancing at the speed of whiplash and we are becoming more interdependent as the days go by. It’s fun, exciting and brilliantly useful. All in all, it may be time for me to retire my “peasant phone” and enter into the era of the Smartphone as I am now starting to understand why they call it the crackberry…
