Dueling Laptops: Does This Sound Like Your House?

Do you do this, sit for hours with your partner, each looking at a separate laptop screen? I have noticed how often this occurs…yet my father still goes out and buys a desktop computer that he’ll only use when he’s sitting at his desk in his home office.  The generations are separated by this common situation, one where the machine is front and center so often,  and another where it’s put away. It’s in the other room.

Then I hear about people who will never, ever get a computer…or even begin to communicate by email. I was reminded of this often when I would talk to a friend who handles people’s finances…she would say, no no, we gotta keep mailing out those paper prospectuses because so many of my clients don’t have email.

Yet for many of us, the dueling laptops are an age-old tradition. We look up from the screens, and sometimes hold them up to show each other what we are looking at. We even send each other emails and hear the tone from across the room when the other person gets our email. It brings us closer even as we are focused, not on the one big screen of the TV, but sharing much of our lives through the smaller ones.