Visiting someone’s house for the first time, whether they be a new friend, a colleague or an old friend’s new house, has always followed a script: the doorbell rings, the door opened and greetings exchanged. Coats and jackets are taken and hung while the visitor to the home glances around, taking in and remarking about the fine china and upholstery while turning a blind eye to the ketchup stains on the carpet.
However while this may have been the correct way to do things a few years ago, it may aswell be archaic in today’s generation of tech savvy and gadget encumbered people.
Rather than glance around to comment on a painting made up of different gradations of white, or to question the homeowner’s state of mind after observing a statue dedicated to what appeared to be a cross between a dog and a hamster, our eyes instead search our new surroundings for the telltale blinking green lights of a router or WiFi repeater. On spying one of the devices, or both if the range of devices is as long as my arm, we turn back to our accommodating hosts who stand by eagerly, hoping you noticed the lopsided vase they made in a pottery class eons ago.
“What’s the WiFi password for your network, it’s called ISPgenericnetworkname right?”
Rather than crumple at the realisation that you didn’t notice the chipped and cracked fruit bowl next to their router, they instead take the proffered smartphone, enter their password which could be as elementary as 12345678 or as complex as 78hu1%^♪♫, before returning your smartphone back to you, all in a single motion as normal as a handshake. They know the struggle of not having access to their social feeds, they wouldn’t want to inflict such pain on yourself.
A phrase which would’ve once had you frowned upon by others for being rude and mannerless, is now greeted with sober nods as the new normal greeting. And it’s not the only phrase to have become massively popular in the last few years, when it comes to modern conversation starters it only comes second to: “Do you have a charger for my iPhone?”. A few decades ago, you would only have to charge your chunky phone (they weren’t smart back then) once every fortnight. Now however, an outing is not an outing unless it contains a pit stop at a wall socket where we’re able to charge our phones.
Alas, not even the world of pick up lines is spared: “Is your name WiFi? Because I’m really feeling a connection” is one of many perfected by people who also sport those depressingly popular shirts with BBM pins on them or QR codes to their Facebook profiles printed on the back.
While we may have stopped evolving drastically (an extra hand would have been invaluable in my opinion), subtle changes like these in our conversations may point to us still having a ways to go. Perhaps in a couple of months when people start throwing dinner parties, instead of badges with names on them, people would sport badges with the hosts WiFi password. And no doubt in a hundred years or so, our dominant selfie taking hand will be a couple of inches longer than the other. Perhaps in a thousand years, rather than getting vaccines when we’re born, we get a NFC enabled sim card implanted into our bottoms?
