but once you have these devices you simply cannot go back and it's hard to even imagine how you lived without them.
It's really kind of weird... Since I was a boy I was the nerd of the family. You know, the one that "plays computer games all the time" (along with all the hacking that used to be necessary to get them to run in the olden days, of course). And while my family was among the late adopters for everything (including VHS-players, CD-Players, DVD-Players and of course the internet... didn't have a connection in the house until ADSL came around) I got to using it pretty quickly.
But by now, I'm the one depending on it the least. I never got comfortable typing on a cellphone and I have a very limited capacity for personal contacts and consider small-talk a crime against humanity, so Social Media accounts are right out of the question. Basically, if you took my smart phone away it would mean I had to carry a book or two and maybe a gameboy around with me instead, but that's the extent of the impact that they have on my (private) life.
If you take away my internet at home I'll get a decent bit dumber and will be really bored for a while (Iguess until I buy enoguh Legos, movies and books to compensate), but again that's pretty much that.
But somehow, I'm still the nerd, although the better part of my family would by now be utterly lost if you took away their phones and their interwebbs :lol:
Now as soon as I'm at work, the situation changes a bit, of course. I still don't need or use a smart phone other than for testing purposes, but I couldn't do my job without the internet. First because my job wouldn't exist without the internet, and second because the library needed to develop a decently complex application nowadays will put Alexandria to shame... :shifty: