App-y Holidays

Remember how revolutionary Internet shopping was back in the '90s? I swear that my mom, a total mallrat in her own right, probably agreed to have a computer for the sole reason that she could window shop in the comfort of her own home.

Then came the cell phone revolution. Gordon Gecko's tin can of a cell phone went from a punch line to being a necessity of life. My grandmother used to wonder about what was SO important that couldn't wait till you got home to call someone. And she ended up having a nicer phone than me at one point.

Yet, I went from having a phone I carried around for "emergencies" to having a fully-loaded phone that I need to have a handle on at every moment. If I don't have it on me, I feel naked. I guess it's replaced the watch as an accessory you can't leave the home without. Heck, I don't even have a landline phone anymore, which ha gone the way of the land-dinosaur, as we have had such a codependent lifestyle on our phones.

Now I find that with my smartphone (for the record, it's an iPhone) applciations, I gravitate towards (ta da) shopping apps. Besides being addicted to Kik, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, I have eBay as well as Amazon on my phone. Turns out, I'm not the only one.

According to the New York Times today, consumers are playing Santa using their phones. Now, we don't even need to purchase things at home. We can be in our cars, on a bus, at a sporting event, for pete's sakes, plugging away at our phone apps, buying stuff! Heck, you can even be in line at a store, and order something from another store entirely! I can attest to that. I've gotten a hankering for Chipotle, and the lines are brutal, I will put through an order on my phone and wait 15 minutes -- generally a longer wait would be on tap if I were to go the traditional route.

It's not even limited to books, clothes, or eBay used items on phones. According to the article, people even buy cars on their phones! I wonder what's next: can we get someone to drive that car to your home, with a full case of wine?

For someone like me, I hate commerce when everyone else is at the malls when I need to browse. I almost accosted someone at a street fair geared towards trinkets for holiday gift giving.

I love my smart phone. And I LOVE that fact that I can easily press a button, on something that is attached to my hip, and get it delivered to my mom's house, so I don't have to lug it with me on a train for the holidays.

But what is the consequence? Are we further inconveniencing ourselves out of being personal? Commerce used to be about one-on-one contact -- the buyer and the seller. And now we are eliminating the middle-man, and using our phones to further distance ourselves from others. How can I complain about that? I am a Trader Joe's fan, after all. But they have still brick-and-mortar stores, and I need to talk to people.

But those cashiers are pretty weird. Any chance I can get them to make an app?