One of the things that I noticed recently is the acceptance of many people to use the software they have, instead of the software that they need. For instance, my parents still use Internet Explorer, rather than Safari or Firefox because, as my father says, they know the software. Even with the volume of errors and breaches that the software such as IE has and can harbor, they choose to keep using it because they know the software.

Which is funny to me, because even if I know a documentation program isn't the right tool for the job, or I'm looking at doing a specific task, the cost behind making the change to the right tool is often prohibitive for me to get it done. I can't use FrameMaker on a Mac, ergo, I look for an alternative that is Mac-based unless I wanted to get my PC up and running. And while I can (or could) install Vista on my Mac with Bootcamp, I've found that it's usually easier and less painful to use one machine at a time with the programs you need on it shared.

Which is why I still find it weird that I'm seriously considering getting my PC fixed so that I can not only get all my materials from the hard drives on them, but also so that I can load up IE and play the online version of Settlers of Catan. It's ridiculous. Utterly and completely ridiculous. I am contemplating replacing motherboard, processor, and RAM not because I need the information on that PC but because I want to play a game that I can't play on a Macbook.

Admittedly, I'm planning on converting the PC into an entertainment system and NAS server anyway, capable of hosting both my files and keeping my movies organized on the hard drives, but still. On some level the idea that I'm just going to take a chunk of hardware and put it in the living room to play a virtual board game online is a little silly, when it comes down to it.

But then that's technology. Nobody thought, "Hey, you know what would be awesome? To take this collection of over eight thousand vinyl records and put it into a device that I could carry with me that's no larger than a deck of cards." Nobody thinks "I need to drive a vehicle capable of driving offroad through insane conditions on a very specific style of pathway originally specified by the chariot makers of ancient Rome."

Technology is often one of those things that people think of as a "must-have" but the energy coils that make my toast brown in the morning have been around in one form or another for over fifty years. My stove - while a shade of hideous mustard yellow - is still functional for heating foodstuffs. While the technology of magnetic induction exists, I still do know how to cook over a charcoal fire or wood fire - both to bake and to boil.

The shift in technology as a communications vector really does make it interesting for me, thinking about the ways that people use and live. So much of our lives are promoted as a value of active consumerism in technology, but without the common sense push towards its innate value.

For someone who intends to reduce his own footprint of possessions, I find it more interesting that I'm slowly paring back the number of items I actually own, and reassessing the technology that not only would allow me to hang on to the stuff I have now (CDs, cookbooks, favorite stories, old vinyl records) but also to seeking out the nontechnology - the things that if I recycled or simply let fade away into used bookstores and junkshops, I wouldn't be terribly upset about.

One thing I have been doing and am interested in is replacing the heavy, heavy albums of photographs on sticky paper with a printed version of my family album. I don't think this is going to be too hard, but I will have to remember to hang onto the originals in one form or another. Of course, I -could- simply recycle all of these old photographs into a paper pile, but at the same time, I keep thinking that even though the film negatives may crack and fade, I still want to keep them. Even if they do take up more space than their digital counterparts on a saved hard drive.