Time marches on after all

[File this one under "not in any way profound, but felt compelled to write it anyway," or maybe "just really wanted to meet my self-imposed ten-posts-a-month quota."]

A funny thing would happen every time I returned to my hotel on this trip. More accurately, the odd thing was what didn't happen. It doesn't seem so long ago, but it must have been years ago (I hadn't travelled that much in the last few years), that about the first thing I'd do on returning to the hotel room would be to check messages. After that, I might turn on the TV to find out what was going on.

Check messages? I didn't even touch the phone in the room, except maybe to move it aside to make room for the laptop. Why would anyone? Forget the hotel phone rate deathtrap. Who needs another number to keep track of and another mailbox to check? The cell phone worked just fine.

Of course.

Then one morning I wanted to know what the weather was going to be like for the rest of the day (drizzly or clear being the main choices). Not being awake yet, I turned on the morning news. And waited while they talked about something morning-news innocuous. And waited some more. And then they cut to commercial. At which point the rest of my brain woke up, I pulled out the laptop and went to the TV station's web site.

Of course.

If there's anything interesting in all this, it's that the web and mobile technology aren't turning our lives upside down so much as slowly infiltrating them. Yet more reason to believe it's better to be pervasive than disruptive.