Day: March 16, 1998

Good Lo-Tech	Bad Hi-Tech
Datebooks, Address Books, etc. Immediate access as long as you have the presence of mind to keep them with you	Databases and Electronic Calendars Vulnerable to power outages and and disk crashes; it takes a long time for your computer to start up just to get a friend’s number for a thirty-second call to an answering machine
Nice, Solid Wood Furniture Easily repaired and looks better with age	Any Furniture from Ikea Sure it looks sleek, but it’s often wobbly after a while, and that formica-covered pressed wood is awful to the touch
Stationery and a Nice Pen Nothing says “I care” like a handwritten letter	Word Processors A note to a friend should never look like a memo from the boss
A Screwdriver, a Pair of Pliers, and Gaffer’s Tape Can be used to fix almost anything with a little imagination	Telephone Tech Support Punching buttons to get through a complex maze only to wait and then have someone condescend to second-guess everything you’ve already tried
Incandescent Lamps and Candles Warm and soothing	Flourescent Light Fixtures “My, what an attractive complexion you have;” Flickers just enough to be annoying
SLR Cameras The crappiest 35mm camera from the Salvation Army can still produce a picture with rich color and good detail as long as you hold it pretty steady	Any Affordable Digital Camera One-tenth the quality at four times the price. Don’t even get me started
Leather, Silk, Cotton	Naugahyde, Acetate, Nylon
Goosedown	Fiber-Fill
Reality Touch it, smell it, taste it, do it now	Virtual reality Wait for it, pay for it

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a big nerd. I was a little slow to give myself over to the world of electronics — I never played video games very much, and I never used a word processor until I was a sophomore in college — but I sure as hell made up for lost time. At this point I can work a computer like it’s an extension of my hands. Technical glitches are generally little more than a series of logically connected hurdles to me, and I’ve got good intuition for technical matters that helps me make a few bold leaps along the way. Software makes sense to me, and I love the speedy efficiency of digital technology. I have no fear of it.

This level of comfort with modern technology extends far beyond the workaday world of computers. Let’s be realistic: even though I may take to computers more easily than others, if I didn’t have some degree of comfort with them I wouldn’t really be able to hold down a job at this point, would I? No, I really like almost all things electronic. I like having an alarm clock that I can set by pushing a couple of buttons while I’m half asleep. I like having voice-mail and managing it without the use of clunky machines and crappy Radio Shack tapes. My six-disk CD player is like having a shrine to music inside my apartment. I pride myself on having not spoken to a bank teller in six years except to open an account or purchase foreign currency. And don’t even get me started on how much e-mail has kept my family and friends together as we’ve scattered across the globe.

A friend once told me that he thought I’d be happiest if I could manage my life while strapped to my computer all day being fed Skittles through a pneumatic tube. This is not true, and not just because the Skittles would send my blood sugar level soaring out of control.

I’m very critical of the media trend —spearheaded by technology pundits,
the advertising efforts of hi-tech companies, and everyone connected to
Wired magazine —that would have us believe that a better world awaits us in which we can fuse the Internet to our television programming, solve problems at work from the beach, and satisfy all our consumer needs without ever leaving home. I like leaving home and think people should get out more often. You don’t have to live in a cramped New York studio to know that there’s plenty more going on in the outside world to amuse people.

I worry about the death of printed matter that techno-doomsayers keep threatening. I worry about becoming more isolated from people on a daily basis than I already am. I worry about homogenization of the things I touch and the things I see and the things I read. While I support technology and the convenience, efficiency, and new opportunities it can offer our culture, I worry about what it’s doing to our critical standards and our self-reliance.

I’m a bad geek, because I also believe in lo-tech.

Continue reading “I’m a Bad Geek”