From Reingold’s perspective in terms of changes in the media I can say that I have been slow to adopt newer forms of popular technology and media. What I have seen however are quick shifts in norms in terms of how individuals within my age group interact with one another.
I definitely noticed differences in people that own smart phones versus those that did not during my orientation as a prospective student at UC Davis. I noticed young individuals with smart phones tended to preoccupy themselves during opportunities to interact directly with new individuals that I am sure many of the other prospective students were seeing for the first time. I was eating in the Tercero dining commons and I stood next to a girl waiting for a restroom to become available, and I was curious about the self-distracting phenomenon that I have been noticing. As I stood next to her, I recall feeling a bit awkward because I wanted to say hello, but I took the opportunity to see how she would behave in a socially awkward situation by fumbling around my pocket for my cell phone. As I reach into my pocket to grab my phone, she mirrored my actions and grabbed her smart phone and began fiddling around with it for some time. From that experience, I definitely felt partially isolated from the other prospective students because everyone else felt as if they may have been too preoccupied with their phones to initiate a casual conversation.
In another instance, I recall recently questioning one of my friends about their desire to purchase an Ipad. I had trouble at the time understanding the concept of essentially having a massive flash tablet that cannot be stored in one’s pocket. She was telling me she wanted to purchase the Ipad because with it she would be able to access thousands, upon thousands of applications and use it as a media gateway to browse through music and keep up with her online persona. I had trouble understanding the logic in one purchasing the Ipad because from what she told me, the capabilities of most recent generations of Ipods and Iphones already have these capabilities. I felt as though she wanted to purchase the Ipad for the sake of keeping up with the next major shift in popular items that are anticipated to be desirable within the next few years. I could not understand the use value of an Ipad because most of the capabilities sound too similar to what typical netbooks, and laptops are capable of handling.
I often find that I have trouble understanding the incentives other individuals have in purchasing the latest technology when improvements are likely to come thereafter the initial release.
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I agree with you that it doesn't make much sense to buy the newest products when newer better ones are going to be available soon. Many people buy new technology not only for what it does but also for the sense of a higher status it gives to the owner. So it makes sense in that case.
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