As much as I love and preach the rapid growing technologies that are making life and work easier and more effective in less time, the more I hate technology as well.

I am so addicted to all things mobile and how it connects me to the world. I can remember the shortcode for Twitter (40404), but I can’t remember my best friend’s phone number. In fact, I can’t remember anyone’s phone number post 2002, when my father finally bought my very own cell phone. I was late to the cell phone game as most of my friends had been using cell phones for a few years by then, but even 4 years out of the Army I was still clamming for a hard line. Now even my alarm system in wireless and I haven’t had a home phone in three years.

So since 2002 I have been becoming dumber. And I blame it on the cell phone. I mean think about it, before you owned a cell phone, you probably knew all your friends numbers that you called from your private line in your parents house and you could dial those numbers fast as lightening. But now, every time you lose your phone, reset it, or upgrade, you send a message out to Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, or whatever ever social network to ask for everyone to send you their numbers again. Even those whom you have weak ties.

Why bother remember 10 little digits when your SIM card can do it for you?

So what happens when we rely on that technology so much, it fails us in life? We can end up looking like real assholes.

This was the case for me back in April this year for instance. I was flying up to spend some time with my best friend in New Hampshire before heading to Boston to meet with Andrew McAfee, of HBS and to sit in on one of his classes. As the plane landed in Manchester Airport, I turned my T-mobile Dash HTC Excaliber smartphone back on so I could text him that I was on the ground. I was able to see that he had txt’d me he was waiting just as my phone froze. I restarted again and my phone started going into what I call the loop of death. This had happened once before so I knew my only recourse was to hard reset the phone. This meant 30 minutes of unavailability to do anything with it, even make a simple call.

So without a phone, I had no number to let him know I was there and I would be waiting for him. Luckily after 30 minutes and just as my phone was normalizing as I was sitting on a bench outside, he walks up, furious. Why didn’t call blah, blah, blah. He said a true friend would have the number written down elsewhere and couldn’t believe I didn’t have it memorize. To which, if I had, asked someone in the airport to borrow a cell phone for a local call or go to a pay phone.

This was not the first or the last time we had issues getting in touch because of not knowing each other’s numbers. I thought we had rectified this because we had exchanged business cards and (we are best friends mind you) that maybe by now we would have remembered or at least keep the numbers in our wallets.

Um no. It happened again. He lost his phone. His billfold is in storage where he thinks my business card might be. He had no access to get online (the Internet seems to be a novelty for laid back New Englanders) and thus excuses, excuses, blah, blah, blah.

OK so this is a long story to make a point. But as I sit here, many paragraphs later I can only remember the first three digits of his number (603). I still cannot muster up the remaining 7 with absolute certainty and it kills me. I mean I learned Arabic to fluency (which I have also mostly forgotten now), but I cannot remember 10 numbers.

My cell phone does all my day to day brain work for me, besides store numbers. It also emails me my daily calendar from google, I get my news, weather and traffic (see @thebeltway on twitter) via FriendFeed, twitter, and text messaging. I even read interesting feeds while getting iontophoresis during physical therapy in the mornings. I even email myself quick directions for meetings from google maps and in bad traffic on 95 I used Windows Live Search for finding alternate routes home.

Essentially its like my brain saying, try as I might, since some device that fits in the palm of my hand can remember all that information for me, why should I retain it in my head? I mean I don’t know how many times I have gone to t-mobile.com to look up the number of someone whom you would think I would have the number engraved on my knuckles.

Next up … getting my text messages online ? Say it ain’t so.

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Yesterday was an amazingly different and wondrous day. It started off with the hotel finding us the biggest chocolate croissants evar! Then Steve Mandzik and I walked down to E*Trade. After which, we started walking back to the Moscone West when we were stopped by News Channel 5 in SF to talk about the presidential campaign so far. I am hoping my soundbyte made it on air. (If someone can find me this clip I will love you forever and pimp your site, blog, twitter, whatever for you.)

Update: My friend Mike B. found the clip, I am standing next to Steve and his soundbyte made it, but mine did not. Next time eh?

After that, I sat in on Joseph Smarr from Plaxo’s presentation “Data Portability, Privacy, and the Emergence of the Social Web“. I saw Joseph earlier this year at the Future of Web Apps in MIami. This time he had more time to speak and talk about the direction in which the social web is going and the ever growing need for our connections to travel with us, instead of re-friending your friends. I also saw Kevin Marks again from Google and I met Identity Woman, Kaliya Hamlin.

I spent a lot of time back and forth in blogtropol.us and on the expo floor. I was really impressed with the Tell Me app that works with voice on your blackberry to keep your hands free when looking for information. I also got a demo of saleforce.com powered by google apps and the possibilities I can take with me back to Navstar. I still have 4/5ths of the floor to explore. A little each day.

Most of the time spent here is actually networking and talking to developers making cool hacks, scripts and apps. But the afternoon we got to listen to the Keynotes of Day 2 (Tim O’Reilly and Clay Shirky surely were the standouts).

So far the new apps I have been working with since I got here Fireball, powered by Fireeagle. Alertthingy, a desktop app for friendfeed.com. And ribbit, another way to make your phone do so much more for you.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMW52Z_a5xM]

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