Gadgets all around?

How many gadgets are de rigueur these days? I’m considering upgrading from my “dumb phone” to a smart phone, and I’m tempted to try an e-reader. At the same time, I’m troubled by the unspoken reality: we gadget people are an elite minority, a society of first-world people who have access to a network and its benefits that others don’t have. Or do we really believe that the entire world will soon be “like us,” connected into one happy progressively social network?

I recently attended the joint annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature, along with thousands of other people—academics from many religions and places, the known academics and the bright-eyed, aspiring academics. At any given time, half of them were fixed on their smart phones, scrolling email or tweeting a speaker’s best comments as he made them. Yet just outside were people in real need, out on the sidewalks in a chilly wind, some walking to and from jobs, some panhandling. One couple told me that they were trying to find the bus that would take them to a food pantry that was distributing free turkeys. They weren’t thinking about Kindles.

Many of these people don’t have a phone—and they’re not in the far reaches of the world, but right here among us. Others have a cheap phone but only a few contacts that they use—and no data access. So why does our culture assume we are all owners of the latest tech stuff?