Thursday, September 08, 2005

Indulging My Technophobia

First let me point out that I make my living turning technology into things useful things through the art of engineering. That said, stop telling me about the iPod nano already.

It's an odd situation, being an R&D professional and a technophobe all at the same time. Well, maybe not a technophobe, but certainly not an early adopter of personal technology. Heck, I still don't have cable TV in my house. I'm going to have to mooch off my cousins to catch my boys in action this fall.

This attitude of mine spills into to my writing. I don't think a great deal of most online journals except those that use the technology to deliver something the page can't. I don't compose at the keyboard - except entries this blog, and not even all of those. I compose audibly (dictating into a tape recorder) or with pen and paper. There are a couple reasons for my avoidance of the computer, but the main one is that I get so wrapped up in capability (formatting, spell-checking, etc.), that I often lose the idea. The point of composing, for me, is to translate the kernel in my head to some fixed form ASAP. Anything that distracts me from that - or God forbid, enables me to start editing it as I go - is bad for me - it slow my process and sometimes costs me content.

I have enough trouble defeating the editor within. I don't want my Dell contributing to the battle.

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