As I spent last week meandering around a beach on an island off the shores of Charleston, S.C., I noticed that those E-reader things seemed to be in everybody's hands. There are a bunch of different makes and models, but the most well known one is the Amazon Kindle.

Not every beach bum kicked back in a low to the ground chair was holding one of these contraptions. Some, including myself, had old fashioned books spread across our laps. We had an advantage in that we didn't have to hold our hands over the page to cut the sun glare to see what we were reading.

But they had an advantage in that ocean breezes weren't constantly trying to go through about 200 pages in the blink of an eye.

I don't have an E-reader, but I do have a tablet and on that tablet, I have the Kindle reading app (as the young people say). About all I use it for is to download books by unknown authors who are just desperate for readers. Having been down that road myself, I feel for these Stephen King wannabes and give them what support I can. Some are surprisingly decent, while others, well, hopefully most have mothers who will tell them how good they are.

It used to be when we went on vacation, the only contact we had with our home life was through ancient cell phones that we hoped wouldn't ring. Now, thanks to smart phones, laptops and the aforementioned tablet, everything from the world we occupy the other 51 weeks of the year might as well be right next door.

Whether it's the wife calling or texting a family member or me answering work questions through e-mail or phone calls, we keep a foot in what's happening and we never really go back to work the following week saying we hadn't thought of the place in seven days. No one really goes "off the grid" anymore.

As I sat on the beach, I noticed in addition to the E-readers, the constant checking of phones, both smart and cell. Sure, the teenagers (why weren't they in school?) might have been sending texts to their BFF's, but the stern looking guys with gray hair hurrying off for private conversations weren't saying, "OMG, they did not!"

I'm not sure whether or not oceans have any effect on cell phone reception, but one minute every bar would be full, the 3G would be standing proudly and the next the phone would be saying it was searching, trying to find something. I'm sure lots of important business was dropped because of this.

Another thing modern day technology has changed is picture taking. Many years ago, when the wife and I were dating, we took photographic evidence of everywhere we went. This was done in groups of 24 and 36 and was not cheap. An 84 shot pack of film (36, 24 and 24) cost about $12, if you went for the cheaper stuff, then having all those artful shots developed would run you another $20-$30, depending on whether or not you wanted one hour service or were willing to wait a few days.

Now, thanks to a couple of smart phones and a little hand held camera, we've probably taken more than 300 pictures and they won't cost a thing unless we decide to have some prints made. Just think, we can bore relatives nonstop and we won't be out a penny!

I don't know how many more vacation weeks I have left at my advanced age (I'm apparently extremely old to people in their mid-20's), but I can't imagine what changes might be waiting in the future. What different way could there be take pictures and receive phone calls? Will we one day be able to record our memories and be able to share them by touching heads?

Considering at this point I still have a six-hour plus drive in my future, that's probably too much thinking.