I am endlessly fascinated with all things geeky: friends laugh at me for the frequency of new (and always improved) cell phones that dangle from my hip (no, I don’t have an iPhone—iPod, yes; iPhone no). I’ve been using PDAs since they were unsightly gray things with dim gray screens and dark gray text. I mystify my other middle-aged friends with my fluency in the sort of 'Net-ese that their kids speak as they scratch their heads wondering when the “Google” became a word, much less a verb; and “Wiki” ceased to be a sort of patio furniture made of woven bamboo. ("Oh, 'wiki' not 'wicker,' they will realize eventually, still scratching their heads). I proudly have Vista Ultimate and Office 2007, including my always-open Microsoft Outlook. (I’m not quite cool enough to have a Mac.) I have all but abandoned paper books for the cool Amazon Kindle that has become my constant companion. It currently contains about 10 novels, the last three issues of Time magazine and today’s New York Times.

I am appreciative of the high-tech toys and tools that enable me to create. Music appears effortlessly notated on Sibelius or Finale, where Ellington standards transpose themselves magically to my vocal key with the mere click of a button. I don't even have to say "please."  And as for writing...

My first professional writing gig was for a nationally-circulated 120-page monthly (business) magazine. As an associate editor, I was responsible for one-third of the magazine’s editorial content. Sounds more impressive than it actually was. Big title, lots of responsibility,  high pressure. Very little money.  And typewriters. Anyone remember those? Gigantic IBM Selectrics. They had those little white correction ribbons. Which was a great innovation, if you weren’t typing on a five-layer packet of copy paper. And I don't mean the kind of copy paper that goes into the photocopy machine.  It was carbon-coated paper onto which you typed your work.  It was a time-intensive and painful experience until you learned to be a very good first draft writer. 

Like many writers, I embraced the invention of the word processor as virtual manna from heaven. I can’t even imagine (and barely remember) life without word processing. In my opinion, the best invention in history was Microsoft Word for Windows. WYSIWYG, and a whole new world (as the song goes).

Yet as I wax poetic, extolling the joys and virtues of my high-tech world, where my entire address book is stuffed weightlessly in my BlackBerry; my email is zipped to me at lunch or waiting in carpool line, I confess that there are some things that are better in real, rather than virtual, life. Take my calendar for example. Try as I might (and try I have) I simply cannot get along without a hard copy of my appointment book.