I went to Texas a month ago and it was rubbed into my face: I am no longer a tech geek that plays with all the toys like I used to. I am being left behind. We were taking my daughter and husband to dinner. I wanted a good steak house. She spoke the name of the restaurant into her phone and it dialed into a computer that took our reservation. As we were driving over to the restaurant she could look and see where we were on the waiting list. She was seeing the same thing the restaurant receptionist was seeing. We got a table within minutes and it was no surprise. She knew we were next.

Today I read that Chilis, Appleby's and others are replacing waitresses with iPad apps. Those with iPads can order and pay their bills while sitting at their tables.

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Unless the iPad app also delivers the food, fills your coffee, and such, I'm pretty sure they're still going to need a wait staff. Of course, they may need a few less. Or not, not all iPad users will use it and not all of us have iPads. If they extend this to iPhones and Androids, it may have more of an impact.

Wonder how this will go over? I remember the old Swaneze Restaurant that had the phones at each table from which you could place your order. They didn't last long.

No one was addicted to those old black phones. On my trip back to Washington everywhere they were glued to those things (the generic version anyway), thumbs a-flying. You see this stuff too. Addicted, looking for a way to play with it.

It takes less people for a restaurant if they can ignore the customer except to serve them. Red Lobster could have used the system yesterday when our server forgot to press the enter button when he put our order in. We had a great time visiting with our son and his wife in the meantime but I was getting kind of hungry.

Maybe. I'm somewhat addicted to my phone but unless I ate at those restaurants a lot, I'm not interested in adding the app to my phone. Seems like it would be far more hassle than waiting for the wait staff to take your order. And, again, if it's only for iPads, that's not a huge percentage of the population. If they expand it to other platforms, I can see it having more impact.

I, admittedly, have been left behind. From the time cell phones first made their way into Grays Harbor I was tethered to one or two of them and, when I retired, want nothing to do with them. I spend quite a bit of time on computers, don't need the rest of the experience. I was surprised to read this and surprised my daughter's technical ease had surpassed mine.

I have seen kids in poor, rural parts of the world addicted to them. High in the Andes, thinking that we were away from civilization, there they were, texting. Grubby kids sitting on sidewalks by my house are texting. I think the hunger is there to do everything possible with their toys.

I, too, spent my working years on an electronic tether. Now that I'm retired, I carry the bare minimum in cell phones, a 7-year-old Samsung that slips into the watch pocket of my jeans. I take pictures with a, camera, do my navigating with a GPS receiver, get my mail on a desktop, and have an iPod for my tunes. My kids do all of that their phones.

Startacs, brick phones, bag phones. Those were the days!

At first just not having to run to a payphone twice a day to report in was freedom. Then the phone or two on your belt allowed you to eat lunch in a restaurant and not worry about being out of place if a problem occurred. Somewhere along the line the freedom was not freedom any more. I was slave to the darn things. I had two on my belt, one a Nextel for interoffice communications, the other for the fringe areas that we have in Grays Harbor and sometimes both of them ringing. A slave to electronics.

Now, not a phone on me and the only thing I miss is the clock on the phone. Free, I am free at last! I ask my wife what time it is and it works for me.

Oh, yeah! The bag phone. My first. I thought it was so cool... for about 6 months. Then I felt I was carrying a suitcase. I had it hard-wired into my pickup. That was much, much, cooler!

I've never understood why people blame this feeling of that having a cell phone, smart or otherwise, makes you less free. It records who called you, takes voicemails, and saves text messages, etc. In other words, I still only answer it if it's convenient for me to talk and if I'm actually wanting to talk to that person. Just like my home phone, I never jumped to answer it or even look unless I'm expecting an important call. But this way I'm free to return those calls while walking the dog, or driving the car (along with the hands-free Bluetooth), or whenever it suits my fancy. Rather than tethering me to something, I feel like it gives me more freedom. Obviously, YMMV.

I do not feel tethered to my phone. I only answer it if I want. I never answer it when I'm talking with someone unless I have told them ahead of time I'm expecting a call. I try to remember to turn off the ringer when I enter a building.

I have special rings for certain people (doesn't help when the ringer's off) so know who to call back soonest!