Early Adopters

I used to think "early adopters" -- people who use the latest products ahead of everyone else -- were asking for trouble. They paid more for essentially under-tested products. Sure, it might have seemed cool to own a DVD player before anyone else, but you would have paid less and gotten more features if you waited a year or two. Even worse, not every gizmo catches on (remember laserdiscs?)

But early adopters for email, like me, might look back nostalgically at the good old days of 5 or 10 years ago. It was just as fast. It was easier to read because fewer people sent gussied-up colors and fonts. And it was the days before spam, when every email was from a friend or classmate or professor. (Snail-mail used to be like that, I guess, too -- thirty years ago. Sure, no one looked forward to bills, but more frequent letters and magazines sure beats junk mail).

I wonder if we'll look back on cell phones as nostalgically -- back in 2003, when every call was from family or friends... before movement-tracking and text-spam.

What should we call this, anyway? GPSpam?