• by Chris , October 4, 2010

I was on the phone with my girlfriend last night, as I was getting ready to leave from work. In mid-sentence, my phone battery died and off went my phone. I could see what was going through my girlfriend’s head as I started driving home, “Did he get mugged?” “Was he in a car wreck?” I knew I had to hurry home and plug my phone in to call and tell her I was fine and that my phone has just died.

As I was approaching the large town on my way home, an idea popped into my head. I had just realized, since I had just finished DJing a school dance, I had my laptop in my backpack. My mind started to think even more. I knew that the McDonalds in this town had free Wi-Fi I could tap into in their parking lot. All that being said, the eureka moment came when I remembered that my Gmail account had introduced a phone feature a month or so ago called Google Voice (more on Google Voice in a later post).

I pulled into the McDonald’s parking lot, opened up my laptop, and pulled up my email account. I simply typed the number into the call feature and started talking to my girlfriend in a few seconds. I felt as if I was the smartest person in the world at that moment.

The other thought that crossed my mind during this experience was what would have happened if I did not have my laptop with me. During the rest of the trip home, I thought about how I could have connected with my girlfriend without a cell phone or a laptop. I came up with one other option; I could have used a pay phone. As I passed the local gas stations, I soon realized that there were no longer pay phones.

I am starting to realize that I am in a generation that has always been immersed in technology, but I also have seen some of the older forms of it as a child. It is weird to imagine a world without pay phones, but in reality, it is the world I live in right now. I guess that sometimes I am oblivious to the changes around me. I wonder what else I have missed in the past few years…