The Trouble With Technology

As an author of contemporary fiction, I'm having a heck of a time keeping up with technology. It's not that I don't know what's out there, or how to use it. (Well, okay, I admit I don't know how to use most of it.) The problem is in deciding how much of it my characters should be using.

I commented on another blog a couple weeks back that when I started writing ExtraNormal, my characters were flipping their phones open, which was accurate for the time. Just a couple years later only the geek kids flip their phones open (or so my kids tell me). But where does it stop? By the next book will they need to be face timing? Skyping on their phones? Or will that be blase and dated in a couple years? What about iPads, iPods, or iAnything? Should folks carry them around? Will it sound lame if they do, or if they don't?

It's details like that than can pull a reader of the story and make them think about the fact that the story isn't real. That someone was sitting at a desk trying to decide whether have their character's talk on a flip phone or face time on an iPod. It's also enough to make your head spin.

I'd love it if some other writers, or even readers, sounded in on how to make technology (or lack of technology) flow in a contemporary story.