conversations frequently stop dead ("another awkward iPhone moment") when the ultra-connected insist on constantly whipping out their mobile internet doodads to settle arguments of one kind or another

Keep in mind that in pre-internet days, these sorts of arguments would drone on for more than an hour while the arguers pontificated about an issue that they simply didn't know the answer to. One could, perhaps, lament that the rise of internet and wireless networks has resulted in a cultural loss with the end of these extended bull-sessions, but I prefer the fact that we resolve these questions and arguments much more quickly now.

But it'll all be better once we get brainstem implants and 3-digit-IQ artificial intelligence. Won't that be great?

Gosh, I can't fucking wait.

Being from Seattle, and having an iPhone, I can vouch that not everyone does these things. And dont'blame the iPhone, or Seattle, please. Blame the self-centered narcissism (oxymorons to the front, please) of our society.

Check it out. In the first sentence alone we have the following hip references: (a) Seattle, (b) software developer, (c) iPhone, (d) Whole Foods, and (e) environmental correctness. Shazam!

Actually, it is worse than that. This is Wil Shipley. He is not some random software developer. He is rock star in the OS X development community. You do not get more "plugged into Apple" than Wil Shipley.

His current company Delicious Monster is infamous in that it has no physical office. They were one of the first to start the trend of working in a coffee shop with free Wifi and paying rent by ordering food all day.

So with Wil Shipley, yes, they could have gotten more hip than that.

Tyro: Actually, I sympathize with that too. Back in the prehistoric era, I'd find myself occasionally in a discussion that revolved around some straightforward factual point (when was John Lennon born? who won the 1963 World Series?) and I'd say, "Well, hold on a second and I'll look it up."

Almost without exception, nobody was much interested. "No, no, it's not worth the trouble." It's not that they thought I was showing off by picking up an almanac or something, but that doing so killed off a pleasant conversation that was only peripherally about the fact in question anyway. After all, it's the chatter that's central to the social interaction, not the disputed fact, but looking something up tacitly turns that around.

So this isn't a new phenomenon. Just more common and, as so often the case with technological enhancements, more annoying than ever before.

Maybe those people can get together for drinks at the Genius Bar and annoy one other. I don't even have a crappy cell-phone yet, and I'm typing this on a desktop computer. I feel so inadequate ... NOT!

One thing that intrigues me here is that John Lennon's birthdate or the winner of the '63 Series is a fact, but "which seafood is the most environmentally correct to purchase" is an extremely complicated opinion. It's perhaps mildly annoying to have "Yankees" corrected to "Dodgers" by someone with an almanac, but it's massively annoying to have some clown Google some stuff and then definitively tell you that catching Atlantic salmon is kinder to the planet than Pacific. The latter is something that somebody should really spend many days researching, if they're interested. But the immediacy of opinions and rankings on the Web is a powerful drug.

Was trying to play a trendy board game the other day and we couldn't find the dice. A saavy iphone user found some virtual dice before we could find the real ones.

First person to comment from the cheese counter of a whole foods wins.

Almost without exception, nobody was much interested. "No, no, it's not worth the trouble." It's not that they thought I was showing off by picking up an almanac or something, but that doing so killed off a pleasant conversation that was only peripherally about the fact in question anyway.

In my experience, it's not killing a pleasant conversation: it's killing off the ability to wage an extended tedious argument with somebody. Whether someone won by being, you know, right, was beside the point.

I would actually be happy if more arguments were ended by somebody looking up an undisputed fact instead of one party being louder, more fanatic, or having nothing more useful to do. However, yes, Shipley is a pretentious twit.

"another awkward iPhone moment"

Being an iPhone owner, I can relate. I find its awkwardness is mostly due to AT&T's embarrassingly slow EDGE network.

These are the types of people one encounters at Whole Foods and even at many Trader Joe's, depending on the neighborhood.

This would probably score high on the new "White People In The News" feature over on the "Stuff White People Like" blog: http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/

Seafood really isn't the complex of a research issue. The Monterey Bay Aquarium has a pretty extensive website that consolidates a lot of information about the health of fisheries and risks from mercury, PCBs and random Chinese chemicals:

http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/seafoodwatch.asp

You can be slightly less hip by printing out a regional guide and putting it in your wallet.

Seafood really isn't the complex of a research issue. The Monterey Bay Aquarium has a pretty extensive website that consolidates a lot of information about the health of fisheries and risks from mercury, PCBs and random Chinese chemicals:

http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/seafoodwatch.asp

You can be slightly less hip by printing out a regional guide and putting it in your wallet.

Technophiles will always find new ways be annoying.

http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/03/13/audeo-neck-band-for.html

latte-drinking-sushi-eating-prius-driving

Just saw a chunk of software--I won't give them free advertising--that will allow to (a) take a picture of a sign with your mobile and (b) OCR the text for (c) posting to your blog. Pardon, your social network page. Blogs are so 2004.

I normally have a mind for trivia, but I must admit that I cannot remember the latest and greatest on which fish is most eco-friendly, except that herring has the smallest GHG footprint by far (and the New England fishing industry is overcapitalized, which causes it to overfish, and to use too-large inefficient boats).

And it could be worse -- it could be Portland, he could have been riding his electrically-assisted cargo bike, complete with solar-powered iPhone recharger (you think I'm joking, but I'm not, though the electric assist is temporarily on safety-related hiatus).

Sometime ca. 2000 I went on a blind date with a guy who sat down in the coffee shop and proceeded to whip out his cell phone, pager, and Blackberry, set them on the table in front of them, and monitor them for messages during the whole conversation. Needless to say, it was our one and only date. Now, though, he might only need the one iPhone - certainly an improvement.

Or sending email to a friend, asking to borrow his truck to pick up a carpet, and get a reply:

No problem. I'm in India, slaloming through crazy traffic in the back of the taxi at the moment, but will be back in Boston this weekend.

After all, it's the chatter that's central to the social interaction, not the disputed fact,

The scripts on the TV show Cheers would have been a lot shorter, if Cliff Clavin had an IPhone.

I think we have a new winner in the latte-drinking-sushi-eating-volvo-driving-pretentious-twit-etc.-etc. stereotype

Gee, I thought sushit was for everyone now... Wasn't it in like the mid-'80s that it stopped being exclusively yuppie-hipster fare? The only time I ever got served it was by working-class Philipinos at a family get-together I happened to be brought along to.

But it'll all be better once we get brainstem implants and 3-digit-IQ artificial intelligence. Won't that be great?

Dream on. Anyway, not to be a pedant or anything, but if you don't have three-digit IQ already without any help, you're on the unlucky side of normal.

What Kevin is saying is what his link to Andrew Tobias was saying yesterday:

iPhones suck.

I wrote:

Gee, I thought sushit was for everyone now...

Whoops, that was, indeed, a typo.

Kevin wrote:

Almost without exception, nobody was much interested. "No, no, it's not worth the trouble." It's not that they thought I was showing off by picking up an almanac or something, but that doing so killed off a pleasant conversation that was only peripherally about the fact in question anyway. After all, it's the chatter that's central to the social interaction, not the disputed fact, but looking something up tacitly turns that around.

I think all those conversations would be more pleasant if we knew all the stuff we wanted to know to settle those kinds of snag points. Maybe it's just been a nerdy crowd I've run with. In my experience it's been the kinds of people who want to win an argument without the facts on their sides are the people who always try to shout you down from looking stuff up.

That said, I've got no plans to get an IPhone.

Oh, and beyond iPhones sucking, is the pretentiousness. AND, given AT&T's position as snoopmaster supreme for the NSA, why the fuck would any progressive person have an iPhone, anyway?

I'm drinking a latte and had sushi for lunch, but - you'll all agree - what makes me even more annoying than Wil Shipley is this: I have a copy of Juno on my iPhone.

Not in Kevin’s paper, but in his state, new anti-vaccination nutbarrery, going beyond the old conspiracy theory fears about autism and into a new mix of conspiracy theory and alt medicine.

You've got to admit that Nunberg did exercise SOME restraint. He could have said that Wil Shipley was buying the seafood to make sushi.

The scripts on the TV show Cheers would have been a lot shorter, if Cliff Clavin had an IPhone.

I think Norm would have needed the iPhone to shut Cliffy up, but point taken. :)

BG, what, would Norm hit Cliff upside the head with one?

Oh, and for those of you familiar with Cuyahoga County, Ohio (Cleveland), investigating whether GOP crossovers in the Democratic primary were committing election fraud, no, it doesn’t look like Rush Limbaugh and his pilonidal cyst can be put in jail with “Bubba.�

It's hard to read a blog now-a-days without reading about how mad, annoyed, pissed or outraged everyone is.

Is Bush no longer a relevant target? Now it is Clinton, Obama, fellow liberals, etc. Democrats can not concentrate on the enemy for more than five minutes without turning around on themselves.

Oh well, four more years of neo-conservatives can't cause anymore harm, can it? In the meantime, we can complain about iPhones, black preachers, Bill Richardson, Carville and Bill Clinton, and anybody else living, dying or dead. After all, the real enemy of Americans is ... everyone.

On the other hand, if we all get IPhones, we'll all be winning arguments with ignorant conservatives over and over again, showing them and on-lookers that they're really as stupid as we say they are.

Before we get too wrapped up in the high-minded things users can do with their iPhones, let me point out that they're very useful for tracking where da hoez at.

All those "hip" references you mentioned are pretty standard for Seattle. Seattle must be hip! :o)

Actually, I think it's awesome.

I was thinking it'd be handy to have a chart of what the price of foods were recently and last year... They've been bobbing up and down by major amounts, and I don't buy say beef round steaks often enough to know what a good price is and when I should buy.

I believe Shiplpey drives a Lotus. Not sure if that adds a point, or takes one away.

One man's nightmare, another man's fantasy.

Every undergraduate econ course (or University of Chicago econ course through Doctorate) starts with "assuming perfect information..."

It doesn't exist, but insofar as it does, markets perform more efficiently. In the past, this kind of exchange either wasn't possible, required a fish vendor with extraordinary expertise, or government regulation of some sort (better labeling). Ultimately wired gadgets may contribute to price convergence - if a consumer is able to instantly audit produce prices at multiple stores in a neighborhood, for example. They may also help suppliers ferret out consumer preferences (unwilling to eat fish produced un-environmentally) and quantify them.

All good.

You know, there's no small overlap between the group of people whose response to government regulation is "caveat emptor," and the group of people who get annoyed at guys taking 20 minutes to pick out their fish because they have to ask a zillion questions to get the information they need to make a decision. I always think the best argument against a libertarian paradise is that it would involve HOURS for basic transactions.

This is really just another side of the big-boxing of the food industry. Used to be there were fishmongers who were on the job for 20-30 years, and interactions like this were smooth because they knew not only the fish but also the customers. They'd know picky jim's picky preferences, and they'd be able to tell in 15 seconds him which 3 fish today fit his qualifications. Nowadays, a lot of the people behind the counter simply lack this experience and because this job isn't a path to the middle class, they don't have much incentive to get it. It's too bad.

"waiting for a slow connection, then fiddling around because a Flash graphic doesn't load properly, then realizing you need to go to a different site,"

FYI, the iPhone doesn't do flash and if the location has wifi you can find the answers extremely fast. There are advantages in being connected to the internet 24/7.

Love my iPhone. Invariably my friends all borrow it to look up various things on the web when we are out together, check their email, etc. Never had any complaints.

B, I use that Monterey Bay Aquarium site too (yes, on my iPhone even), it's great.

To the person who mentioned that "things white people like" web site, you realize that almost everything on there is just a conservative's caricature of liberals? Sorry, but white people are not the only liberals, in fact there are quite a few white conservatives out there, if you hadn't noticed. Nor is liberals' concern for the environment, openness to foreign cultures, etc., contemptible and foolish like the site implies. I scratched my head wondering if the site is run by an angry non-white conservative, or a white conservative angry at white liberals for being race traitors.

Did Whole Foods suddenly stop being ferociously anti-union? Or is that OK with the yuppie hipsters now?

Wil is self-admittedly OCD, which could have something to do with it.

Really, though, you can stop at the fact he was shopping at Whole Foods. The rest is just gravy.

Pretty much anyone who carries around and uses a cellphone for anything but essential emergency situations is a GREAT WHOPPING JACKASS AND TOTAL TOOL.

Human beings were not designed to walk around talking to iPhones or invisible headsets, etc., etc.

What is WRONG with people?? I would think it would be a RELIEF to get away from the phone (completely apart from the dark depths of phonedom discussed in another thread a short while ago).

If you're into cars, a Lotus most definitely adds points. If you're not, does it matter?

If you're a Buddhist, a lotus adds to serenity. Much better than "hipness points."

Let me get this straight, "software developer" is a hip reference now? I've spent my whole life as a geek. I never tried to be hip, as that seemed to involve being not too smart and certainly not enjoying using your intelligence to solve challenging logical problems. Or at least that's the way it seemed in high school. So I found a field for people like me to enjoy and put their talent to good use. Are you telling me the rest of the world wants to be me now? This just turns my world upside-down. Please tell any hipsters considering my field to try their hands at fashion design or something else at least as useless.

- a hybrid-driving 20-something Seattle software developer who gets all his groceries at Trader Joe's or Whole Foods.

"I can be super-picky"
Or, as the staff might say, "an asshole".

You didn't count his calling himself "Wil" rather than "Will" Shipley.

"latte-drinking-sushi-eating-volvo-driving-pretentious-twit-etc.-etc. stereotype"
I love it. I drink my coffe at home with cream. Does that make it a "latte"? I make sushi for me and my wife once a week. I drive a volvo, but I live in Norway, so it's not really very pretentious here. I can't be bothered to carry my old mobile phone with me half the time, and it's not an i-phone anyway, but on the pretentious twit side I am a yoga teacher.
But before any of you get snarky with me i should mention that my middle name is Wayne, and I'm sure you know what stereotype that indicates.
Bwahahaha!

I drive a Prius. At $3.50 a gallon gasI'm laughing. (Are there low-emission Prius drivers versus high-mileage Prius drivers?).
I'm a Mac fanatic. I have a 160 gig iPod.

But if I am going to buy fish I look up the most environmentally sound fish BEFORE I GO.

And when I'm out with friends I deal with messages WHEN DINNER IS OVER.

My father taught me not to waste salespeople's time, and my mother taught me that when you're with someone, you give them your full attention.

Technology has nothing to do with that. (In fact, the answering machine made it easier, because the phone wasn't picked up during dinner.)

I suppose having the internet in your pocket can sometimes, maybe, come in handy... But. I just don't think it's ever urgently needed. RIGHT THIS SECOND. As if public cell phone users weren't obnoxious enough already.
And on the issue of instantly settling debates: debates have no wrong or right answer. If you get so hung up on clarifying every irrelevant, nugatory detail THIS INSTANT... then it must make it awfully difficult to live in the moment.
"Information is not knowledge." Einstein.