Feb 27 08
The Luddite
By Dave Imperiale
I am 31 years-old and I have been a proud, self-promoting Luddite for almost 15 years. In college, shortly after the internet and email were introduced and becoming main stream, I wished for a world of typewriters, stamps and the sound of the rotary phone.
I actively fight technology when I can. I still carry the most basic Nokia model because I can drop it in a puddle and the battery lasts for days. It does not have email or a camera. I think MySpace is for predators yet I’ve only been there when a link for a band takes me there. I think Second Life is twisted. Or do you think it’s normal to get yourself an avatar and have to purchase genitalia for it? I think choosing the word “avatar” for one’s online presence is blasphemous – to language. I’m a vehement opponent of organized religion and still think it’s wrong. Look it up.
I work with senior executives at some of the largest technology companies in the world and fully comprehend their strategies, yet I have no idea how to reconfigure the interface of my Personal Folders in Outlook. For the past three years, I have only been able to see who the sender of the email is unless I double click the email. I understand it can probably be fixed in less than a minute if I tried to figure it out.
I am lazy and stubborn when it comes to technology. I do not want email on my phone because I feel like I would constantly be working. I do not want a Treo or a Blackberry because I see jackasses at restaurant tables punching keys while a beautiful woman sits across from them eating her bread.
I still use the postal service to pay my bills because I don’t trust the “important” bills online (phone bill is my exception). But I will check my balance online. I think trying to protect your identity online is a waste of energy because if someone knows what they’re doing and they want your personal information, they’re going to get it. I may change my mind on this if I ever have any money.
I stand on the wall of the generational divide. I love text messaging because I no longer have to talk to people unless I actually need to have a conversation. But I really didn’t understand what a blog was until last week. Even as I’m typing the word “blog” for the very first time, I see that Microsoft still doesn’t recognize it as an accepted word in our language because it’s underlining it.
I am a technological contradiction. In my mind I am too old for the digital age and too young to keep ignoring it. I feel what a 65 year-old baby boomer must feel like. Though there are so many people my age and older who have embraced it. Entertainment has helped.
I had an iPod for over a year (as a gift) before I downloaded iTunes because I thought it would all be too difficult for me to operate. Like everyone else, it has changed the way I listen to music and find the next album I’ll listen to over and over again for two weeks straight. I wouldn’t have discovered the Silversun Pickups or the Heartless Bastards and dozens of other bands without it. And for that Apple, I am thankful.
I thought TIVO was a luxury I wasn’t ready for. I thought I would have too much trouble hooking it up to my television. Once I moved back to New York from San Francisco, back to civilization, I made the leap and subscribed to the DVR service through my cable provider. It has changed the way I watch television and made me realize that the quality of some television programs is approaching the quality of a film that lasts a season. My strategy for when the network seasons begin is to record every pilot that seems promising and then weed through them. This approach has given me the privileges of Friday Night Lights, Flight of the Conchords, House, and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
I am confused and technologically discriminatory. Even though DVR and the iPod has changed my life so much for the better, I am skeptical and apprehensive. I fight what might make my life easier because I consider myself a part of the post digital generation. I still wish I was part of an earlier generation. I yearn for the day to be in my wheelchair, rolled out to the porch by my beautiful nurse, with my glass of bourbon to taunt the neighborhood children in the Brooklyn suburbs. At that point kids probably won’t even have to go outside though, they’ll experience outside virtually without the risk of getting hurt so their idiotic parents won’t have to worry.
While that remains a promising glimpse of my future, because of the direction of our work at SNP, the direction of technologically influenced media and communication, and the way technology has improved my entertainment catalogue; I think I’m somewhat hesitantly ready to slide gently off the wall to objectively embrace the generation that lives in a network community. I will openly and journalistically investigate this world with the perspective of a premature curmudgeon. I will comment on technology that helps versus hurts. I will combine the professional and the personal with regards to a work/life balance, which I believe technology has helped ruin.
I think I will need help. Any comments and suggestions for devices or sites or technologies to check out that will make my life better or easier will be much appreciated. I’m told these blogs are supposed to be interactive anyway. So we’ll see. This may have been a one time purging and I may never write about technology again.
