Tom Brosz said:

>The tech revolution has generated a number of things in recent
>years that you get real used to, real fast. Most obvious is the
>Internet. I have no idea how I got along without this source of
>information. I have dim memories of spending hours in libraries
>searching for information I can find in minutes from my keyboard.

The Internet is a miracle but it is also a time sink. I'm now an almost incurable Internet addict and waste way too much time surfing the web. The problem with omniscience is finding the time to process the information.

>Cell phones. I am never out of touch with my family when they
>need me, and there have been a few emergencies which would
>justify the yearly cost all by themselves.

I've resisted cell phones. When I'm away from the office, I don't want people to call me. In fact when I'm in the office, I don't want people to call me. That's what e-mail is for.

>My wife's new car has one of those navigation systems in it,
>with the little map on the screen. Just got this a few months
>ago, and am already thinking about buying an add-on for my
>heap of a Eurovan. Gas stations show up on the screen,
>which has saved us once already.

GPS navigation is interesting. However a good set of AAA maps are almost as good and a lot cheaper (you can write on them). I would NEVER permit my car to have a GPS system connected to a cell phone while under control of the car's Powertrain Control module (Engine Control Unit). The opportunity for invasion of privacy or malicious hacking would be unacceptable.

>Just got a TIVO-type system with my cable. Wow. Goodbye,
>VCR tapes, except for stuff I want to play on other sets. Just
>being able to stop and rewind something I'm watching is pretty
>cool all by itself.

One of the first things I did when I moved into my house was take down the television antenna and tear out the coax cable. The only television my kids watch is from the videos and DVDs that my wife and I bought for them (they watch way too much of that). MSM televised news is worthless as an information source. We're a bit disconnected from the outside world and that suits me down to the ground. The home is our private world with the MSM and popular American culture kept outside the front door.

>My daughter has an IPod, and uses it extensively. I don't use
>these myself, but have discovered that many people are sticking >"books on tape" on these things.

I find those gadgets too fiddly to use.

>Other people swear by digital cameras, but I haven't gotten into
>that just yet.

Film is cheap, stable and has excellent resolution. It's easy to flip through individual photographs but a nuisance to fire up the computer and locate the CD with the correct image files on it.

A technology that my wife and I are actively resisting is hand held computer games for children. I've seen way too many young children utterly addicted to their Game Boy computers. I know I would have been a hopeless addict if I had access to one of those things when I was a kid. My son is not at all happy about this rule. A friend showed him neopets.com and my son wanted to spend all his waking hours fooling with that website. The stern rule came down from his unsympathetic paretns: Not on the family's computer. If you want to do neopets.com then mooch off a friends computer but it's not going to happen in our house.

New technology is cool and I like fiddling around with it. However existing tried-and-true technology is often times as good or better than the new stuff. One should be skeptical of new consumer technology until it has been proven to be genuinely useful (and not harmful).

Gary