I've got a story over at the Mothership about Google's iPhone plans, in which Vic Gundotra, the company's vice president of engineering, talks about Google's commitment to producing native apps for the iPhone. (It's part of a larger profile of Google's Mac development efforts that I wrote, just in case that sort of thing interests you.)
Anyway, there's an anecdote Gundotra related to me that I couldn't fit into the article but that I think is amusing enough to repeat here.
He told me that he and his family were having lunch a few weeks back with another family -- adults clustered at one end of the table, kids at the other. And at one point in the conversation, Gundotra's friend asks a question that Gundotra doesn't know the answer to. He says, "I don't know," which is when his four-year-old -- previously indifferent to the adults' conversation -- chimes in: "Daddy," she asks, "where's your phone?"
"What happened was, she heard me tell my friend 'I don't know,'" Gundotra told me. "And when she hears me say, 'I don't know,' she expects me to pick up my iPhone and get an answer. That's the world a four-year-old is growing up in."
I've had similar experiences with other technology. For example, sometimes when I'm in a movie theater and I miss a portion of the dialogue, I'll instinctively make a motion with my hand like I'm pressing the Rewind button on a TiVo remote -- I'll even mimic the little be-boop noise the TiVo makes when it rewinds, if I'm being especially mindless. And I always feel just a trifle disappointed when the movie doesn't rewind on my command.
But that's just me. How about you? Got any stories about how the iPhone -- or some similar electronic doodad has changed the way you interact with the world around you?
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