@wundayatta, yes, I am a chronic late adopter. But it’s not a “no recent technology” stand. It’s not really a stand at all, just a reflection of my attitudes, preferences, and prejudices. I don’t like to learn to use new things once I have a good, capable grasp of the old ones, and I have a native (New-England-rooted?) suspicion of anything that is seductive, anything that seems too easy, and anything that replaces and hence drives into oblivion what seems to me to be a valuable skill (such as addition and subtraction) or resource (such as a printing press).
My husband still teases me about preferring buggy whips and high-button shoes. I’d never have cared to suffer so much inconvenience for fashion, so forget the shoes, but having a ride that loves you and comes when you whistle and can be refueled anywhere there’s grass does not sound so bad to me.
Even while working in high-tech for decades, I resisted new tools, new applications, new versions, everything. I was nearly always the last person in my department to be dragged through upgrades by long-suffering IT guys.
My husband is a gadget freak. He purchased a brand new (large and bulky) hand-held HP calculator back in the seventies while they were still warm from the assembly line and thought he’d received a gift from heaven. He brought minicomputers into the house. I’m not completely sure I’d have one even now if it weren’t for him. I signed on only when I had to compile and largely write a manual for editors and found that it was wonderful to be able to make a correction and get a clean page without retyping the whole thing. That was in 1982, and by his standards I was a late adopter and a hard sell.
That was about when I retired my electric typewriter. The electric typewriter was a gift. There was nothing wrong with my old Smith-Corona manual portable, which I still have and which will work even when the power goes out, provided that there’s a ribbon to be had on the planet.
I do use my desktop computer constantly, and I have a laptop for travel. I have become dependent on them, and my dependency troubles me. But I didn’t reach a state of genuine dependency until about five years ago. Before that I truly could have (as I said often) taken them to the curb and drop-kicked them into the gutter and not missed them for long.
I have a solar-powered calculator that I bought four or five years ago to help me keep household financial records, which until last year I did by hand in ruled green accounting books. Now my husband fills in an Excel spreadsheet.
Stereo? Yes. I went to college in the sixties, after all.
And I do have an electric pencil sharpener on my desk. Because I still use a lot of pencils. But there is a rotary-crank manual model affixed to the wall above my husband’s desk.
I wash dishes by hand.
I chop a lot of vegetables, but I basically use the food processor only to make turkey stuffing twice a year. I don’t use the blender at all.
I think we were among the last people in the United States to acquire a microwave oven. And I do use it. But I don’t like it. However, I am a great fan of refrigeration—one comfort I would not want to live without. (I’d be ok with an icebox and a block of ice, though.)
And I have a 42” plasma-screen TV, and I do love my Netflix. But as for the TV itself, I turn it on to a broadcast channel only for the Olympics and the presidential debates every four years, and then I have to ask my son how. No cable, needless to say.
Again, I’m not opposed to smartphones. You are welcome to yours. I just don’t want one myself, much less “need” one.
I guess, in a word, I’m just pig-headed.
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Also: i’m with @jerv on this, using something that is convenient doesn’t automatically mean being dependent on it.
@Thammuz, I agree with your point, but I’m not the one who used the word “need” for those things. I say no one needs them.