Apple, other shiny shinies and being human

I'm as seduced by the iPod this stuff as the next man - and woman. And yet...

Over the past 15 months since I got an iPhone, there are now fewer free spaces in my life. The miracle machine is always there with an app to fill that moment.

A few weeks back my iPhone suffered a water incident and had to be replaced, which took a couple of weeks. It was refreshing to have a plain vanilla mobile. I was of course pleased when the replacement iPhone came in.  But it was a useful pause for reflection.

I would say the things that give me most real distinct benefit are
- Weightbot, which has tracked the Harris tally down from 90 kg to today's 81.3 kg and counting
- Runkeeper, an ingenious app and website for tracking runs, cycle trips etc.
- New York Times app - there are full articles and the text is scalable making for excellent reading.
- Radiobox, which allows me to catch snatches of Radio 4 while I'm lifting weights or pottering
- iTunes but specifically the podcasts I listen to.

It's all still relatively new and I hope I'll develop the good sense and discipline to ensure it ONLY benefits my life rather than taking it over.

We really need to bear in mind that however many features and apps there are, we still only have finite attention to allot every day. In anything but a very superficial sense, multitasking may be possible for technology but it's not possible for humans, because we're still on the original OS. The likes of Apple, Nintendo and other technology companies will do their damnedest to grab every moment of our attention they can. It's important - very important - to keep some attention for the things that made us human before technology dangled the promise of making us superhuman.

Knowing yourself

Chatting with my excellent friend Mike Wilsher yesterday, we stumbled on an intriguing paradox. It's an observation rather than a criticism.

Many people don't have a clear sense of who they are and what they're really about in life. I'm no exception, although things seem to be getting a little clearer.

And many people have a very fixed idea of who they are - such a fixed idea that they limit their possibilities. "I'm not the sort of person who...." etc.

The paradox is that they're often the same people.