My daughter, who to some is the queen of the computer keyboard and I Phone, called the other day and said it was finally freaking her out.

She writes a daily blog, follows the news and stock market. She looks up MLS for her real estate business. She scans suppliers for her decorating clients. She has hit information overload.

To put Megan over the top takes a lot. I began to ponder. We all check our email. Might run a spreadsheet or write a proposal and then it hits high gear. Texting, Twitter, Facebook. We are socially networked. I wish it felt better.

I heard the anorexic Steve Jobs relate his latest tale of wizardry, cloud computing. A breathless wag said he only gets off his deathbed for things he feels strongly about. TMI

 

With the I Cloud you are no longer bound by device. You can access information from your cloud by phone, computer or Ipad.

 

It’s all there in front of you. 24/7. I was especially taken by the proposed usage. You can keep your music library in it. That’s the big deal.

 

You remember the promise at the onset of PC’s many moons ago. They were going to enable us to do things quickly and therefore have more time to ourselves. Do you know anyone who now has more time to themselves than five, ten, twenty years ago?

 

Just for a moment imagine the amount of texting among the teen set. Some average 150-250 texts a day. At home late at night. In class. In the car. At the dinner table. It’s just those crazy kids. Guess again.

 

For the adult crowd, go into a Starbucks, fancy restaurant, locker room, golf course, bar or super market. It’s everywhere. Talk to someone and the telltale buzz occurs. He or she keeps looking at you but you know they really want to see who is tweeting. Go ahead. Answer it. It has to be more important than talking to me.

 

Players now tweet from the game floor or the dugout. They and other entertainment stars now tell you what had for breakfast, how their digestive tract is working and how their love life or lack thereof is going. And how about Anthony Weiner ? I won’t go there.

 

We are now on call 24/7. You get called on the weekend. Late at night. This is important… not really. There used to be a thing called spare time but that is a thing of the past. Sorry honey, I have to take this. Then if you don’t get a response momentarily, where the hell have you been?

 

The scariest part of this whole thing is the power that can be corrupted. Just think that 9/11 was planned over the internet. Let’s say there are 20-25,000 Al Quaeda who have waged a terror war against the entire world. Regimes have been overthrown. Battles planned. All from their Blackberry or I Phone.

 

We have spent over a trillion dollars and untold numbers of our own because of this. I am not castigating Jobs or Bill Gates but be careful what you wish for. I fear it will only get scarier with hacking. When power is so easy to access, we have got a problem.

 

Yes we have to keep up. But I really wish so much of the time wasn’t spent on spurious endeavors. I wish the time we spend playing games could have just a small part of it learning of the world’s problems and how we might solve them.

 

Weiner and Ensign and Spitzer and Edwards were supposed to be knee deep in the affairs of state..no play on words. How come they have all this spare time to follow their dalliances electronically rather that the deficit? Maybe there is a whole new deficit?

 

I actually love technology. My children and many of yours use it quite efficiently. Many earn their living at it. I don’t text. How the hell could I ponder if I did all that? My limited brain capacity can only handle so much. But I get it.

 

I am going to go out on the front porch now with my vodka and tonic. I might have a cigar. I will read the paper. I will engage my neighbors and friends face to face. Probably old fashioned but somehow that is just the right amount of information for me.

 

As always

 

Ted The Great

 

Factoids:

 

Emails Worldwide…

107 trillion– The number of emails sent on the Internet in 2010.

294 billion– Average number of email messages per day.

1.88 billion– The number of email users worldwide

89.1%– The share of emails that were spam.

262 billion– The number of spam emails per day (assuming 89% are spam).

 

Text Messaging US

 

 Teens in the US average 3349 text messages per month.

 

Over 5 billion text messages are sent in the US daily.That is in addition to emails.