Hi Tech Gadgets Addiction!
May 20, 2009 – 11:12 pmHi my name is Tab. I say it like you would at an alcoholic’s anonymous meeting, and in my mind I hear a group of people saying, “Hi Tab”. I go on to talk about my own personal addiction, hoping that I can gain some level of hope while not really having any desire to change. “I’m here because my family says I have a problem”.
It all started back in 1989 when a co-worker had a Mac Plus and brought it to work. I had no idea really what it would do or why I needed it, I only knew that I needed it. I drove from Seattle to Portland to buy it so I didn’t need to pay sales tax. I had made sure that I purchase the external floppy drive, which was about 4 or 5 dollars as I remember because I needed to be able to copy and transfer data easily. I had no idea what that meant at the time, only that I needed that too! Later, I decided that I couldn’t handle the transferring of data so I purchased a 20 MB hard drive that was about the size of a shoe box and clipped onto the back of my computer. With amazement my friends looked at it in wonderment exclaiming there was no way I would ever need that much storage space.
I also purchased a carrying case which allowed my computer to be “transportable” so I could use it while in hotel rooms on business travel. I had become the master of spreadsheets and voiced that I no longer needed manila folders! All was fine until I discovered a little thing called AOL, this allowed me to communicate to the world. Back in the day AOL charged by the hour, not monthly. I had bills that were $150 a month cranking out data on a 2.4K modem I had picked up. And you didn’t need the World Wide Web because AOL had everything anyone could possibly ever need contained within its imaginary walls.
To my amazement there was life outside of my Mac Plus, I discovered a car phone! This was a cool phone that came in a bag that looked like a purse that allowed me to plug it into my cigarette lighter and make calls. I carried that around with me for fear someone might steal it from my car, it looked like a man purse. But the first person to say something would have to deal with me pulling out the phone like John Wayne pulling out a revolver. Meer men would fear me. Add another $150 a month to my growing list of gadget bills.
Here I am today 20 years later, I know longer use a Mac and have transformed myself to the life of PC (for better or worse) and carry my iPhone around.
I say to the group as I finish my comments, “I don’t have a problem; my laptop next to my bed isn’t an umbilical cord. I can leave it at the office whenever I want”.