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  • Vacation Observations

    By Joshua Kim April 26, 2010 7:50 pm EDT

    --Kindles Are Everywhere: People seem to love to read on these things on the beach and at the pool. Mostly guys in the 45 to 64 demographic.

    --The iPad is Perfect for Vacations: At various times the iPad served to: a) entertain kids with movies and games on long car rides, b) as an easy way to delete e-mail (to lessen e-mail pileup), without the motivation to respond, and c) to download and play Banagrams.

    --The iPad is Too Heavy to Read With. My brother's Kindle DX provided a better reading experience solely based on weight.

    --WiFi is Like Oxygen to a 23 Year Old: Beach house had DSL and WiFi, which was heavily used by my brother and his girlfriend. They worked (see below), but also searched for information, listened to music, and communicated with co-workers and friends. Their laptops were attached to them like a new evolved appendage.

    --Millennial's Do Not Distinguish Between Work and Play: Watching my brother and his girlfriend for a week left me with the distinct impression that the old model of a "workplace" and a "home place" is just not going to work for his generation. Even the distinction between "vacation" and "work" seems to break down. As far as I could tell, they were both incredibly productive - while being social (with their laptops), and still making time for beach walks and bike rides. The millennial generation will finally kill the old factory model of work and school (good riddance!).

    --Old Fashion Paper Books Equal Relaxation: While my family was playing Banagrams or Skyping or whatever, I read two amazing books - The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050, by Joel Kotkin and Next Stop, Reloville: Life Inside America's New Rootless Professional Class, by Peter T. Kilborn. Maybe a Kindle would have been okay, but the paper experience would have been hard to beat. I'll go Kindle when I can get an e-book as easily from my College library as a paper copy.

    --Audiobooks are Essential for Long Drives: Finished up This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All, by Marilyn Johnson (look forward to discussing), and almost completed the wonderful, Potato: A History of the Propitious Esculent, by John Reader. Is it legal to wear headphone (or one earbud) while driving?

    What are some of your vacation tech observations?

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Comments on Vacation Observations

  • Posted by Chris on April 26, 2010 at 9:15pm EDT

  • "The iPad is Too Heavy to Read With. My brother's Kindle DX provided a better reading experience solely based on weight."

    I'm surprised that you found the difference to be that great. The iPad is only about 5 ounces heavier than the Kindle DX.

  • How to fool my wife.
  • Posted by Brian Mulligan , Open Learning Coordinator at Institute of Technology Sligo on April 27, 2010 at 7:45am EDT

  • My wife, not being a millenial, tries to ban me from working during vacation. Perhaps if I had an iPad she would not notice.

  • Let's not generalize
  • Posted by Dr. Pepper , Academic-in-training on April 27, 2010 at 9:45am EDT

  • Welcome back from vacation :-)

    I just wanted to chime in to say: let's not generalize. While some millenials don't distinguish between work and vacation, there are many that do. I am one of them. Are there cool projects at work that I think of? There are indeed! Do I work on them? Nope! If I have an idea I will jot a note on my phone, or create a voice memo, but I won't necessarily work on the project. You can't turn your brain off work when you are on vacation, but you can focus on things that you like doing that you can't do at work (read a book, play a video game, watch a movie, relax by the beach, play some beach volleyball and so on).

  • Quality Reading Experience
  • Posted by Philogenes , Professor at a Community College on April 27, 2010 at 11:00am EDT

  • My (I hope) future daughter-in-law let me try her Kindle for a bit while she and my son were visiting last week, and I decided I had to have one. Being impatient, I decided to go with the Barnes and Noble Nook after checking reviews online. After using it for three days, I must caution that it's addictive.

  • Working vacation
  • Posted by Max on May 2, 2010 at 11:45am EDT

  • As the 23-year-old in question, I was really happy that the house we were in had wifi – I had to spend a lot of time working during our vacation because of some time-sensitive deadlines for my job. If I didn't have the flexibility to work remotely and didn't have internet, I couldn't have gone on the vacation at all!

    For the record, I would have opted for zero connectivity to the outside world if it had been an option. But in this regard, I'm probably atypical of my cohort. And younger children are even more "connected" – I just read something today about a group of adolescents who sent ~40 and received ~40 SMS per day. It takes me a month to reach that volume.

    --Max

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