Technophiles

As I stopped for lunch today, I walked past a man in overalls in his late 50's relaxing in one of the many rocking chairs outside of the restaurant. He raised a hand to me in greeting, much like the townspeople at home, and I returned it. I headed inside and got a table. While sipping my not-so-sweet tea, I observed another overalled man in his late 50's or early 60's with a laptop set up on his table, apparently waiting for someone. He stepped away from the table, pulled out a cell phone, and called his lunch companion, who turned out to be the man waiting outside. I found it interesting that he guessed where the man was, but instead of walking outside to check, he simply called. Then they sat down together and leaned into the laptop, the first man explaining to the second about his specialized farming equipment. "Here's your coarse grinders, your fine grinders, and your conveyor..." Click, click.
Technology is certainly endearing itself to all nowadays. Both of my on-call jobs use headsets on radios to quickly communicate with everyone, and so does the restaurant I patronized. Daily emails tell us what promotions to have in the store, where to place merchandise, and what signs to display. Families keep in touch instantly from around the world with email and blogs, including mine. There's even an ever-growing subculture of technophiles, the people who get the latest new thing simply because it's the latest new thing to show off to their group of geek friends.
I even got to out-geek one of the geekiest guys I know at dinner the other night. We were discussing the terminology of "nerd" versus "geek" (he prefers "geek") when I pulled out my flash drive and waved it at him: "En garde!" (I bet I spelled that wrong!) He actually didn't have his with him, which suprised me! This is the kind of guy who'd always have a flash drive with him.