Last night Mr. Bethanne, the younger Mini Maven, and I were having dinner at a restaurant. Said Mini Maven told us that in order to avoid our “blabbing” about “bosses and work and stuff I don’t get” that she would be listening to her iPod. We don’t usually condone such techie and antisocial behavior during mealtime, but since the restaurant was noisy and we had a large booth in the back, we decided to allow her to plug in and tune out for a few minutes.
Just as I was telling Mr. B. about my day’s author interviews, Miss M. said “Look! I’m watching a video on my iPod!” (She received one of the new Nanochromes, in pink, for Christmas). She turned her little device around so we could see Beyonce doing her awkward stick-figure “All the Single Ladies” dance.
I said, “Before you know it, we’ll all have screens embedded in our palms!”
Mr. Bethanne thought for a moment and said, “It would be much cooler if we could have flip-down clip-on glasses, like those sunglasses my father wears. Then we could all read easily on the Metro! One person might be smiling because he’s reading David Sedaris, another person might be frowning in thought, and so on…”
I gave him my best Men! Sheesh! stare and said “And I suppose that would be useful for viewing anything you wanted, huh?”
He just smiled. Men! Sheesh! However, I do wonder how soon it will be before we’re reading on screens that are somehow suspended right before our eyes.
That sounds so cool yet so incredibly scary and antisocial at the same time…
I don’t know. If we’re going to be staring at screens, staring at screens on glasses could at least _look_ more literary than staring at an i-Pod.