FOMO

Last week, while reading an article about digital addiction in Der Spiegel, I came across the acronym FOMO. The authors claim that people become addicted to smartphones out of Fear Of Missing Out. Indeed, I often observe kids and adults in the street stooped over their screens, texting and bumping into fellow pedestrians, an accident that will never happen to me. Still, the question is allowed: Am I an addict too?

Before my retirement, I kept a yearly appointment agenda with handwritten entries on meetings, travel, birthdays, etc. When the year changed, I started a new agenda by transferring the already scheduled events from the old one into the new booklet. The annoying part was always copying addresses and telephone numbers until address lists were delivered separately and could be reused.

During my last professional years, I kept an electronic agenda in parallel that I never trusted because keeping data synchronized between different devices was cumbersome, didn't always work, and appointments and birthdays were often lost in synchronization.

The situation has changed dramatically since I carry a second memory in my pants pocket. On my iPhone, I keep my agenda, tasks, and addresses. I use Informant 5, an app that synchronizes all my personal data and is readily accessible and continuously adjustable on my i-devices and my desktop Windows PC.

In addition, I keep my whole library of classical music on all my devices, although I rarely find time to listen to it. Lack of time is also why I do not manage to finish an ebook. I compensate for this shortcoming by reading three books in parallel. Nevertheless, having electronic books always on me is convenient when sitting in the waiting room of a doctor who did not keep his appointment.

For short waiting periods, I rather like to consult the news. While I keep the paper edition of the local Badische Zeitung - Elisabeth and I both read it at breakfast time - I also subscribed to the digital edition. This allows me to scan the local news at home already the night before (after 10 p.m.) or read the paper when I am not in Freiburg.

I have an electronic subscription to the NYT and receive NYTimes.com News Alerts by email. Lately, I even abandoned the paper copy of the weekly Der Spiegel in favor of its electronic version. There are three advantages: With the electronic subscription, I can access the most recent news on Spiegel Online, follow it around the clock, and, as an ecological benefit, no longer have to dispose of the paper copy of the magazine.

I must not forget that the weather information, dictionaries, Wikipedia, exchange rates, timetables - you name it - are only a fingertip away. By keeping all essential information on my iPhone, I admit to being lost without my second memory. Still, don't forget the data stored on the iPhone comes in handy, compensating for my shrinking brain.

Please, don't call me an addict but a dependent.

Caught in the act on my sister-in-law's iPad.

While meeting with the family in Cologne for lunch at Em Krützche (restaurant at the little cross) last Saturday, Red Baron is desperately looking for departure times of streetcar number 18 running along the Rhine River between Cologne and Bonn on Sunday mornings.

My sister-in-law and my brother had invited Elisabeth and me to their apartment and to lunch at Da Pino (at the pine), an Italian restaurant at Mondorf on the Rhine. Eventually, I discovered that streetcar number 18 was not running that Sunday because of the Cologne Marathon. Subsequently, Elisabeth and I had to take a dull train ride.

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