A generation gone?

After two and half hours of wandering around in the streets of Helsinki I finally made it home...safely. Yes, safely. I had no phone. 

In the morning soon as I had performed the office routine tasks; remove socks. Checked. Put music player on left side of desk. Checked. Put mobile phone on left side next to music player. Oh oh. 

If it wasn't for the communication and social tools we have available today on the internet, I would have felt like a complete orphan. At some point I think I did. Despite being from a generation that grew up without all this technology, I am pretty much attached and consider myself well adapted to the social demand of today.

Fooling myself? Not until I was 19 did I own my own personal  Stone era mobile phone. A pink Nokia phone that must have costed me a fortune and most probably made me live on fish tuna and rice for at least a month. But it did what I intended to; make me feel like my generation: Cool. 

My sister on the other hand was born super cool, she needn't ever even think how to get a mobile screen touch phone. It was given to her by her father as a compulsory defense instrument for her to survive in this world. How otherwise would we, the eldest, know when she gets off school and whether she is at home?

I had a safe sort of life growing up. I never thought when I was ten, that a mobile phone can be indispensable one day.  Four hours ago, I was lost without it.

After work, I was supposed to meet my sister to go for a dance class. After carefully reading my instructions on Gmail, N had to coordinate our meeting in the center so that my sister and I meet at one point at a certain time ( He called from his mobile to my sister's). The operation failed and I think I lost my identity for a second. I missed the class too because without a mobile with internet I could not search at which stop I had to get off. This is how I ended up wandering around in the snowy streets of Helsinki today. 

So is my generation really gone?. No longer will I meet someone unless calling that person 5 minutes before with my mobile to check if she/he is there already. No longer will I rely on memory for bus schedules since my phone, the ipad or a computer can do the trick in a few seconds. No longer will I make that long distance call to my friend in Australia or Singapore because Skype or Facevideo will do that for free.

Those who were born in the eighties know what I mean. What is left for us to treasure is the assertion that we had the legacy from the generation masters before us and that we are constantly learning from the young of today. Take for example lol or lmao.