From Jeff Jarvis…
So I went to a large breakfast this morning thrown by the Newhouse School at Syracuse and The New Yorker (much more on that in a minute). Most of us were assigned tables and so I put down my briefcase and went off to schmooze, which is what one does at these things. I came back and my case was moved and chair occupied. I looked miffed — and various folks later hovered around to throw themselves on swords for this — but I was embarrassed to say why the chair mattered to me. It wasn’t because this was Table 8 and that enabled me to look down my nose at the poor sods at Table 10. It wasn’t because I was going to sit next to some media mogul and make a deal that would change my life and finances. It was because the chair was near an electric plug. We bloggers arrange our lives around wi-fi and plugs. To make my thought process even more pathetic, I then had to rearrange my route to the airport today so I could find someplace to recharge — because, you see, I didn’t want to be out one watt for the plane ride — or I contemplated going to the airport quite early to scope and stage out a precious plug there. Sad, isn’t it?
It is, it is. The post attracted some nice comments from fellow addicts. Like this one:
THis post made me laugh at myself — there have been so many times when I got to my gate at our local airport an hour or so early and since I know where the plugs are on the concourse, I head for a plug. When someone else is there already, I find my initial reaction is a bit of irritation — ‘hey, what are you doing at MY plug?’ Since other travelers know the location of plugs, not only are them often taken, but there is the inevitable small group of hoverers sitting ‘casually’ near the prized two seats, waiting to jump in when they are vacated. It’s no wonder that batteries with extended lives (a week for a laptop; a full day of use for a drilll, etc.) are so highly sought after by R&D firms. Their social impact through the phenom of changed seating priorities will be huge — I will actually get to sit with my family while we await our flight.
