It’s easy, considering the environment I work in, to assume that everyone in the world uses various bits of technology, all the time. I depend on my MP3 player, mobile phone and PC to such an extent that it still shocks me slightly whenever someone I know doesn’t bother. But I do know people who don’t have (or want) an MP3 player, and whose mobile phones are held together by Sellotape, elastic bands and hope. And they’re strangely not bothered about it.

Maybe it’s because I’m constantly writing about new product launches, but I’ve found myself starting to become a bit of a magpie on the tube. This morning, for example, I counted the number of people seated in my carriage who were listening to music — five, out of twelve, counting myself — and if the person next to me pulls out their media player, I can’t help clocking it and noticing what it is. I see a lot of first generation iPod Nanos, several of the older, clunkier iPods, and no Shuffles whatsoever; lots of people using Walkman phones; and usually someone watching The Simpsons on a PSP every other day or so.

I’m not sure what the point of all this people-watching is, other than that it’s quite interesting to see what people out in the ‘real world’ actually use.

I’m the last person you’d ever expect to speak out against overuse of technology for communication. I’m horribly addicted to e-mails, to instant messenger, and to text messages. If I want to tell someone something, I want to tell them, then and there, without having to wait till I see them. I’m also a huge fan of blogging: I’ve had an online journal since about 2001, and I subscribe to probably more than a hundred of them. (Okay, lots of those aren’t live any more, but if their authors ever come back and post, I’ll be one of the first to know about it.)

But even I can see that people often use inappropriate ways of communicating. I’ve received text messages from people who were under the same roof as I was (memorably, once from a hungover housemate commanding me to bring him tea). I’ve received e-mails from people about things that would be better discussed face-to-face; but e-mail, I guess, just seems less confrontational — and therefore easier.

The most unpleasant misuse of communication tech, though, has to be passive-aggressive blogging. I’ve seen it time and time again: someone gets angry or upset, and instead of talking to the person that caused it, they blog about it. Openly, usually in the knowledge (or hope) that the person concerned will read it.

It’s not the fault of the technology, obviously; it’s just human nature, more often than not attributable to cowardice. But really, the world would be a much better place if people would just speak to one another! A phone call, even, would be vastly preferable to posting a blog entry about how unspeakably awful certain unmentionable people are. Blogs are great, but they really don’t compare to actually talking to someone, not to mention the complete and utter lack of necessity to create a lingering record of some minor feud. And anyway, by the time the person concerned gets around to reading whatever it was that got published about them, the author has usually cooled down enough to regret posting in haste. It’s just a really really bad idea all-round.

I’m being a bit hypocritical, I suppose: maybe next time I see a blog entry complaining about some unspecified crime committed against the author, I’ll give ‘em a call and see what’s up.

On a completely unrelated note: I love living in London. I went on a lunchtime mission round the newsagents of Covent Garden and, on the way, passed a branch of Burger King. Outside, an enormous (really: absolutely enormous) man was haranguing a Burger King employee, with the aid of a sign reading “I’m a Burger King” and a film crew. I have no idea what that was about.

I’ve recently become aware of an addiction. Well, it’s really more of a dependence; something I rely on, and can’t get through my day without. I’m using it constantly, in one form or another…

Yeah, I’m a Google addict.

My homepage is Google.com. My main e-mail account is a Gmail one, my website is hosted on Blogger, and I recently discovered the time-saving joys of Google Reader (with the accompanying Firefox extension, naturally). My Google homepage is customised to the hilt, with handy access to Wikipedia, a to-do list, weather forecast, and, um, Bejeweled and a Magic 8 ball, just because they were available.

I’ve tried telling myself it’s not that bad really; I only occasionally use Google Maps to find out where I’m going, and I haven’t succumbed to Google Earth. I don’t use Google Calendar, Google Documents or Froogle, but I do use various bits of Google’s search engine on a 100-times-daily basis, even when I should be using, say, Wikipedia, or a dictionary. (Other people use Google as a spellchecker sometimes too, right?)

I even use my Gmail account as a quick and dirty way of storing files online for later access via another computer — if I’m entirely honest, I’m typing this, right now, into an e-mail that I’ll save in my Drafts folder.

It’s probably a bit dangerous to be this reliant on any one company — but it’s Google, so it’s not a problem, right? This is, after all, the company whose motto is ‘don’t be evil.’ Okay, so there was quite a fuss when Gmail came out and people got scared of their targeted ’sponsored links’, which picked up on keywords in your e-mails to figure out what to try to sell you (right now, it’s offering me free satellite, 1GB free storage space, and a strategy for using Google adwords) but we all got used to that and stopped being freaked out. Targeted ads are just good sense, surely? And surely all that stuff about how Google censors the Internet in accordance with various countries’ policies, well, that must be okay, probably. As for the numerous lawsuits (over YouTube, particularly, or over Google’s plans to make thousands of books and newspapers freely available and searchable over the Internet), well, people sue over anything these days, don’t they?

I’m not convinced that using Google so extensively is a problem (I can quit whenever I want! I just… don’t want to) or at least not inherently, though maybe I should branch out a bit. Just in case, like.

I don’t know. Is anyone else as much of a Google addict as me? Or are your online activities sensibly spread out over various different companies? Everything seems to be becoming more and more integrated these days (see: Flickr forcing even its early adopters to get Yahoo accounts to sign in with) and there’s always something just a tiny bit scary about monopolies.