Forward Looking to 2017

The iPhone came out in 2007. It's kind of crazy to think that less than ten years ago, if you wanted to Google something, you had to remember what it was until you reached a computer. I used to write reminders to myself as SMS drafts. I'm just old enough to remember winter evenings on the train home when it was too dark to see out the windows and everyone in the carriage either read a book or spent forty minutes with an oscillating head just trying to avoid making eye-contact with other people's oscillating heads. Or talking to their neighbours. Whatever.

Humanity has not had long to adjust to the power of the pocket computer. Honestly, we're not ready for it. At first I found it amusing watching young people nearly walk into bus stops or other young people because their eyes were affixed to their screens. Now it's getting beyond a joke. Everyone's doing it now. Even super old people who should know better. They're checking their email while walking through crowds, or looking at image macros (wait, I mean memes) on FaceBook on their way through doorways. How many steps have they done? What's the current temperature? What's the next song on shuffle?

Phones are soon going to come with built in apps that warn you when you're about to walk into something in front of you, and people are going to celebrate it like it's not a sign of our impending societal collapse. I'm calling it now. My New Years Resolution for 2017 is to never walk and look at my phone at the same time. I feel strongly enough about this that I'm resolving for 2017 in October. I am going to become the only person on the planet who steps to the side of the footpath before taking the phone from the pocket and turning the screen on. I'm posting this online to help keep me accountable. Humans will almost definitely evolve into a species that can walk and read a phone screen simultaneously, but I don't want to be on the wrong side of that natural selection process.