After Blackberrying

For the last week I have been a Blackberry user, since my trip abroad in Holland, Belgium, and France made access to ubiquitous computing desirable enough for me to chose to rent a wireless device from the Vodafone company and my local service provider Verizon. I've been conscious of how being able to check e-mail on the fly and to see both SMS and e-mail on the same screen sharing inbox real estate has shaped my communication experiences.

Despite its small dimensions, I actually found the keyboard easier to use than the toylike One Laptop Per Child keyboard. I also appreciated the tangible feedback of mechanical raised keys; as Ian Bogost notes in his review of the iPhone as a "geek's chihuahua" consistant input experiences matter.

I am almost always online in any case, so I am not sure that it made me less attentive to interactions in the "real" world, even if a countryside punctuated with windmills was going by in a high speed train or a transgendered junkie was sliding off the seat across from me in the Paris metro.