RED BRICKS

We all have something in common. Every single one of us. Is it the empathy for our fellow man? Is it the common bond that is humanity? Is it that we all think Tom Hanks is the friendliest person ever? No.)

We all have cell phones. There's one within arms reach of you right now. Just try it, I'll wait. Some of us have two. Some supplement their main phone with a tablet. Some still flip it open to check the time because they forgot to wind their pocket watches.

And since we all have these devices sewn into hands, they become very personal objects. That is until the next model comes out. Then that object that you were in love with minutes before the new model hit the stores, now looks like a red brick that you won on the game show Let's Make a Deal.

Now there are exceptions. The love of old school Blackberry's is like a cult. You still find people clinging to the tiny keyboards and not surfing the net because the processor can't take anymore jpegs. Then there are the opposite people who think the cell phone is a unnecessary, evil invention, brought to Earth by an alien race to enslave us.

But these electronic wonders, no matter what side of the good cop/bad cop fence you sit on, still do one thing that we all forget they were designed to do. They connect us all in ways that 20 years ago, we'd have thought was impossible. They let us be free and in contact with each other on such personal levels that sometimes your friends aren't people you have even met in person. Everyone is one email, text, tweet, call, hangout, Snapchat, and Facebook post away.

Good or bad, that is our world now, and the foreseeable future doesn't look like it's going to change anytime soon. We will see what comes next to replace all of the future red bricks that we're all holding right now.