For me its the Internet. I often wish I could be wireless. Not just my devices, but me. I’m totally lost without email. Its the way I communicate with the majority of people in my life. Right now, the only way I can communicate with my daughter is via Skype and email. She’s in Australia doing an internship for the summer. We Skype pretty regularly and its neat that I can talk to her and see her all thanks to the internet.
I’m old enough to remember life without the internet. My first computer was an IBM and we didn’t even have dial-up. Heck, everything was run from a floppy drive and I can’t tell you how many times I filled one of those suckers up and couldn’t then save my work. A fax machine was like the neatest thing ever and a cell phone? Well that was for emergencies only and geez, I didn’t get a cell phone until long after I had my 3rd kid. Of course, now i have an iPhone, an iPad, an iMac and a MacBookPro and if one of those items doesn’t hook me in, I break out in hives.
The internet has really paved the way for a lot of really cool technology over the years. The internet is really the birth place of eBooks because an eBook is much like a web page. In the early days of eBooks, before eReaders, they were done in PDF format, which is more of a static page. The internet is the birth place of Cool Gus Publishing. Sure, Bob and I first met in person at a conference. We kept running into each other over the years and we talked about publishing, books and eventually about eBooks. At first, Bob didn’t think much of them, but as he started getting the rights back to his books, he started wondering what to do with them. And in an email conversation I suggested he self-publish…hence I can most certainly not live without the internet!
What technology do you think if it vanished would really put a damper in your day?
I’m with you on Skype too Jen, and for the same reason – my Ma & Pa are back in England but they never feel too far away.
That and GPS, cos I have zero sense of direction!!
It has to be the internet for me, too. Like you, emails are the one thing that I check regularly, and contact most people with.
All of the above – and digital cameras. I absolutely love having the freedom to take dozens of photographs without worrying about the cost of film and development – and being able to see the results instantly without having to trek down to the local chemist to pick up the snaps – and usually being disappointed with them!
For me, it would be all of the wonderful online communities like Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, WANA, The WG2E and RG2E, and the list goes on…
This is how I find and connect with all my wonderful readers and all you A-mazing writers too!
I’d be lost if I couldn’t spend each day with all of you!
Electricity, certainly!
I saw a funny cartoon on Facebook where different technologies were saying how they got the one-up on the other. Google was like, “I know everything,” and the Internet was like, “You would’t be anything without me.”
And then electricity had the last laugh.
Great post, Jen! And great comments and thoughts, everyone! I love digital cameras and communities, too!
Internet for me too! I have the tablet, the notebook, the tower and the smartphone and have coffee every morning with my sister thousands of miles away via Skype.
I’m old enough as well to remember my first IBM, loading DOS with a floppy drive and the dot matrix printer with its paper feed with holes on each side. We’ve come such a long way!