The Future is Awesome and Now

I have a confession to make. It's not a bad one but here goes. I bought an iPhone. Before anyone gets all judgemental I should point out that the 'phone it replaces is eight years old and was finally really beginning to show its age by refusing to hold much of a battery charge, switching itself off every now and again and generally just getting a little eccentric in its dotage. I have searched for 'phones for a long time now but none of them were smart enough to justify the extra expense or space that they take up to justify getting one. Finally my elderly Nokia became too senile and had to be retired. Enter the iPhone. I have to say I am incredibly impressed. Here is a device I can watch TV on, stream radio on, listen to my podcasts on, catch up with T.V episodes, keep tabs on the news, my e-mail, my calendar and and and. I was, and indeed am, slightly overwhelmed by it all and have been struggling to find some frame of reference for how exciting the ownership experience has been but Saturday finally provided it.

Having had lunch with T's family I was due to jump on a 'bus and head south of the river to Camberwell for a friend's birthday. I stopped off at Fortnum and Mason to get a cake as a gift and during the time I was in the shop a huge protest march of 100,000 angry Tamils had started past the front of the shop cutting off my route back. I had, at that time, no idea how big the march was, where it had started from nor where it was headed so I couldn't work out which way to walk and which 'bus to try and catch.

Enter the iPhone, or Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy as I'm now calling it. From the BBC website I was able to find out how big the march was going to be: answer - Huge. Damn. I was then able to find a map of the route the march was to take and from that using the mapping tools on the 'phone plan a route I could take to circumvent the protesters as efficiently as possible. Next I was able to look up which 'bus routes were affected and thus to plan the rest of my walk to get me to the one open bridge across the Thames that had a bus service of use to me. I reckon the iPhone saved me a good hour of aimless wandering and it meant I was only a few minutes late. Sometimes I really feel like I'm living in the future and it's amazing to me.