The other day we’re sitting in a restaurant, all in a group out to eat after a show, and someone starts talking about a video on YouTube that we all have to see. He keeps talking it up until suddenly somebody else pulls out his phone (I don’t even know what kind of phone it is) and pulls up an internet browser on it. And we went to YouTube and looked up the video and watched it. But I mean...the phone is like a tiny computer. And if you flip it vertical, the screen flips vertical, and if you flip it horizontal, the screen flips back. Is this really necessary?

Communications technology keeps getting better and better, as we work towards a nation of unified communications abilities. But it leaves us all scrambling to keep up with the latest technology. It goes in waves. First the tech nuts will hear about PBX phone systems. Then it’ll leak downward and soon everybody’s got to have one of these business telephone systems. Or tech nuts will go wild over IP telephony, and next thing you know, we’ve all got to have voice-over IP and VoIP security.

It all hits campus at the same time too. It was so funny and bizarre to suddenly see everyone walking around with white ear buds when the iPod phenom started. Right now it’s MacBooks. Both crazes I have been a compliant participant in. What’s it going to be like when everybody has VoIP? Softphone?

This is that concept we talk about in Intro to Econ, in practice: network externalities, how a good’s demand increases when so many people are using it that it makes life that much more difficult not to have it.

I am resistant to it in some areas. I have an iPod and a MacBook, but I hate the idea of camera phones, for instance, and didn’t have one for a long time. My current cell phone does have a camera but it’s a bad one and I rarely use it. Still, I can’t help participating in the trends – or wondering whether these technologies are actually that much better or useful; or is it an illusion, created by the number of other people using them?