Shock of the New

by John Holbo on June 26, 2008

So I got up this morning and, reading the pages of the venerable “Atlantic Monthly” over coffee, learned that – some hours earlier – my young daughters, ages 6 and 4, half a world away, had said something amusing.

Ain’t it just the 21st Century, though?

(In my defense: I figured Belle was going to be way too busy to update the blog, so I didn’t check there first, before firing up Talking Points Memo and Matthew Yglesias – always my first reads. I did check iChat, but Belle wasn’t on.)

In fact, this is more a case of small world than future world, since Belle and I know Matthew Y. Anyway. What strange and futuristic experience have you had recently?

{ 9 comments }

1

Megna 06.26.08 at 7:13 am

I think it is the rule rather than the exception that young daughters say amusing things, even when they are half a world away.

2

Delicious Pundit 06.26.08 at 4:44 pm

What strange and futuristic experience have you had recently?

I rode the bus?

3

Righteous Bubba 06.26.08 at 4:54 pm

I found my daughter’s medical reports posted on her mom’s blog. I am pissed off.

4

Keith 06.26.08 at 7:45 pm

My wife and I are moving from Georgia to Oregon and just found our new apartment on the Internet, arranged for the leas papers to be prepared from the other side of the country, all without much hassle. That’s pretty amazing, since, just a few years ago, this process would have taken months of phone conversations and mailing of paperwork back and forth. It could, conceivably, have been achieved paperless, even but for the signatures.

Sure beets scouring the want adds from a hotel room.

5

bob mcmanus 06.26.08 at 8:40 pm

Researching why the fireflies have disappeared from my backyard.

Habitat destruction.

6

djw 06.26.08 at 9:27 pm

The way you phrased it, I imagined you read about your daughters in the pages of an actual “dead tree” copy of the Atlantic Monthly, which would have been really weird.

7

David Gorsline 06.27.08 at 3:26 am

This afternoon a colleague and I were debugging a web-based application that I’m writing. We used his iPhone to do it.

8

SG 06.28.08 at 9:29 pm

Every time I walk anywhere in London, it is like being on the set of Children of Men.

9

Doctor Slack 06.29.08 at 1:42 am

What strange and futuristic experience have you had recently?

Pretty much the entirety of the past eight years.

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