It got into our lives indeed, and it got there fast. Remember how finding a soul mate on the net was reserved to the shy and socially handicapped, and evolved into an accepted new style of dating, meeting and matchmaking. Some folks even entertain cyber-relationships with cyber-girlfriends they have never met or touched. What’s the next step? Going beyond the transmission of messages, voice, and keyboard trivia and broadcasting touch and smell via cable and cyberspace? Imagine long-distance relationships made “physically” possible with a remote but real and yet digital cuddling, making you switch from using the webcam to the “cuddlecam”, and maybe the “kisscam”, or even the “couplecam”. You wish. 

Start collecting bills and coins, even credit cards, which may soon be turned into vintage collection items, as we trade wallets against thumb-based silicon-made pay-touch and id-check systems. Your pin code? You choose; thumb or retina. The interesting part is that we kept our universal and funny human habits even though technology kept on pruning everywhere, raging and evolving around us. It seems we are still who we are. Having a mobile phone does not mean you talk longer and to several people at the same time. It does not even mean we answer every call, and even when we know who it is. It does not mean you use, master and know all of its functions. But it may imply a new love for the text messaging function, which is very close to remind us of the old tradition of enveloped and sealed letter sending. A text message exhales your curiosity and opening your mailbox makes you feel like you’re unlocking that physical mailbox inside your building or in front of your lawn, which seems to be getting most of the love from advertising and offers.

It feels cute, highly personal and getting text messages or letters tells you there are people in this world loving you enough to take the time to send you personalized hand-written notes. It was even discovered that text messaging can be a very active night and nocturnal occupation, especially in the context of love relationships, friendships, and dating. Isn’t it incredible how those "mmm" quotes or the use of "..." in text messages can have powerful effects on the person sitting on the other end of the line, and you too? So does the use of metaphysical second-degree blurry inspirational and arousing messages which have been found to be appealing to our inner and deep human senses; basically things you would not say out loud and that only a text message can convey. That read and write effect, with the silence and delayed pause in between revived an almost forgotten human feeling, the one letter sending was taking care of not so long ago.

You ever had a "voicemail conversation" with someone? After four or five exchanges of left messages on each other’s voicemail, you really start wondering about the efficiency of that technology. What’s the next step? Having some kind of a virtual waiting room in which voicemail becomes a nice person you can chat with while your correspondent is finishing his current phone call? You could choose a specific personality or human genre for the artificial-intelligence-powered voicemail character you wish to have for your "voicemail’s waiting room." Imagine you choose a secretary or a grumpy grandpa, a famous actor, or a cartoon character to speak to your waiting correspondents? “Hello Voicemail, I was trying to reach Bryan, but he can’t get off the phone for a second can he? … Ah, it’s the new lady he met, ha? … What’s her name again? … Sandra is her name! … How am I doing? … I am doing super fine, thank you, how are you? … You must be getting overwhelmed with work because of Bryan’s phone addiction right?. Just tell him I called and that we're still on for Friday's drink.” Don’t laugh; this could be a business idea someone in Japan is already working on. 

Who really adapts to who here? Technology or us? Or is it a mix of both, but what kind of mix? We don’t know how this “chicken and egg” dilemma ends but we know we, humans, do not go at fiber-optic speed, or as fast as the Outlook send-and-receive function, and we certainly are not in streaming mode, at least not all the time, but we do enjoy what it brings as well as what it could bring in the future. When we go on the web, we are knocking at the door of a gigantic library of information which size is above human limits, growing and updating faster than your clicks, and yet, many times after the first ten minutes of doing your little “web-check ritual”, you don’t know where to navigate anymore, which article to check, which website to browse and so on. Do you realize you are sitting on the equivalent of around fifty-seven thousand years of non-stop reading, and yet you don’t know what to pick. It was maybe easier when it was just your parents’ modest home-made library you had to choose books from. Still, we like the idea of having excess supply of choice. 

 Don’t even get me started on robotics, nano-technology, bio-technology, nano and bio technology, genetics, artificial intelligence, and technologies we didn’t even name yet, and which are still boiling in the lab or roughly sketched on a napkin. But hold on a second here. Remember the distant past, and even go to the past of the past, and listen to how they were projecting themselves at the time, and what they called major technological advances and breakthroughs. It has always been evolving the same, just getting more and more interconnected and complex. Evolution and technology did not start with the wheel or the laser, but since the very day men discovered trees can be used as protection against the rain. What’s driving it? Necessity, luxury, adaptation, security, imagination, or all of the above? Technology’s evolution never crawls but it actually leaps and in a very Olympic manner. Sometimes, it’s invented for one purpose, and ends up serving another purpose; ask the military guy if he had matchmaking and social networking websites in mind when he invented what we call now the internet.