I dislike new technology. All this talk about iMacs, RSS feeds, Web 2.0, and cellphones with Internet capabilities just annoys the dickens out of me. It’s really ironic that, being a student in a New Media program, I don’t share my colleagues’ enthusiasm for the shiny future. While everyone around me is wetting their collective pants over the latest OS or whatnot, I just go, “I don’t get it! What’s the big deal?” And in the end, it gets to the point that I almost question my sexuality for not getting a hard-on for technology. (Uh… I’m sorry for the mental image.)

Maybe it’s just because I’m a cranky old man trapped in the body of a lanky brown kid. It’s funny to think that, if my father were to be believed, my family was one of the first to ever possess a cellphone in the Philippines when they first came out in the ’80s. (To his credit, my dad used to work as a communications engineer for PLDT.) Also, my mom used to be one of the few office workers in the ’80s who actually knew how to operate computers. In short, we were technology pioneers!

Mog by Yoshitaka Amano

Nowadays, we don’t upgrade our technology until it’s like six years old. While everyone on the planet was already blogging on their respective iPods, my family was still using dial-up on a PC with a 2GB hard drive. And it was powered by rubbing two wooden sticks together on a pile of dry leaves.

It’s just our personal preference, really. I guess we just got tired of keeping up with the Jetsons and decided to live outside the normal flow of time. Sadly, even we knew that we couldn’t keep being technological laggards forever. When it comes to the point that even Amish farmers have better technology than us, that’s when we usually surrender to the zeitgeist. Well I say, a pox on that zeitgeist! Live life at one’s own pace–that’s zemzelett’s motto.

Next time, we’ll look at how digital media made it easier for people to voice out their opinions. Which, in zemzelett’s humble opinion, is a Truly Bad Thing. Also: comics! Maybe!