InsaneGeeks World » Luddite http://blog.insanegeeks.com Just another WordPress weblog Tue, 18 May 2010 19:02:46 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 Am I a luddite… http://blog.insanegeeks.com/archives/26 http://blog.insanegeeks.com/archives/26#comments Thu, 25 Feb 2010 18:20:22 +0000 InsaneGeek http://blog.insanegeeks.com/?p=26 I’m not talking in the skilled English clothing craftsman destroying of looms way, but in the everybody else has gadgets why don’t I?  When I mention to my colleague that I don’t really have personal gadgets (iPhone, kindle, etc); I get the oddest of looks and sometimes even a “how can you survive” response.  My wife will contend that I have way to many electronic stuff already scattered throughout the rooms in my house; but I never have had any of the “personal” ones.  I don’t have a personal smart-phone (got an old blackberry that’s work supplied), I’ve never even owned a MP3 player (this gets me the most *what??* responses), I was even pretty late to the whole digital camera movement.

Now I don’t have any personal grudges against such things, and they actually are quite inviting to me.  I’m constantly on Gizmodo, Engadget, TechCrunch, etc looking at the latest “buzz” on a gadget I don’t have.  I’ve found myself going to Amazon, etc multiple times in the same day putting some gadget into my cart, removing it 10 seconds later… I just never seem to cross the line and actually *get* one.  At the last minute I always find myself repeatedly asking myself “Are you going to use it as much as you think, or do you just want one to have one?”  It’s not like they scare me, I am an early adopter of things… heck I’ve still got my 10 year old G1 Tivo still running (hacked to allow 10mb network to), been using Vonage & NetFlix pretty much since they came out, I bought a 1080i tv a number of years before I could even receive HD content, etc.  Maybe it’s because I’m expecting more life out of these things and lately I dislike where the “you must upgrade to be a techy” crowd is running to.  It truly astonishes me that people are standing in line to throw away their working phone they stood in line last year for because it now has some minor cosmetic upgrade.

The really odd dichotomy of this situation is that my role is to be at the forefront of technology, to bring in new technology features and functions to our enterprise and I do that all the time.  I feel like I am constantly poking into the ether of the technology hype machine but I never actually get them for myself.  I actually find myself bringing the latest iPhone app, new e-reader, etc to co-workers who are the gadget nuts because they haven’t heard about it yet.  So it’s not like my grandparents who really see no value in these things for their daily lives.  In the end where does that leave me, how should I be categorized… I don’t think Luddite is appropriate as I’m pro tech and follow it… am I just an evil-genius living my gadget lust through others vicariously, what gadget guy am I?  I guess an InsaneGadgetGeek (ha!) moniker could be appropriate because compared to most others it probably does look rather insane.

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