What would Miss Manners say?

Techno-weenie etiquette

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), April 22, 2000

Answers

how about posting the article? Not interested in registering at NYT.

thanks

-- (doomerstomper@usa.net), April 22, 2000.

Sorry, I thought anyone could access the link. Don't know if I should copy and past a copyrighted article--the NY Times could sue me for millions. It's whimsy, not important info, so you're not missing too much.

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), April 22, 2000.

Fair Use - for educational or research purposes only April 23, 2000

DIGITAL DIN

The Golden Age of Techno-Bores

Related Articles Circuits Holiday Shopping Guide Smart Tools for the Home With Chips, Lasers, L.C.D.'s (April 20, 2000)

By AMY HARMON

AVE you checked out the Rome MP3 player with the form factor of an audiotape that you can play in the tape deck of your car? No?

When are you upgrading to the Palm VII?

Did you know the new Nokia can also be used as a lipstick mirror?

Wait, you haven't customized your cell phone ring yet? You can't be serious.

Geekspeak and gadget fetishism used to be limited to geeks and gadget fetishists. Not anymore. In these digital days, not knowing the difference between memory and hard disk space can be grounds for social ostracism. For so-called knowledge workers, cell phones are required and it helps to flaunt a personal digital assistant -- preferably in the same unit.

To the less obsessed, it's beginning to get tiresome.

"It's all they talk about," said Joia Speciale, an independent filmmaker, about several of her male friends. "They get into that whole boy toys thing about comparing. I just think there are so many things they could be doing better with their time."

Ms. Speciale, who owns a cell phone and a Palm 3E, says she does benefit, however. "In a way it's good because when I want something I don't have to do all the shopping," she said. "They just tell me what to get."

Resistance is futile, and surrender can seem kind of nice.

Take Arthur Molella, who pulled out his new Palm 5X while waiting on line at an airport the other day and immediately received the knowing look of a tribal brother from a British passenger in front of him wielding a Palm VII. Soon they were happily chatting about how often they back up files and the benefits of CD-ROM burners.

"This is the closest I've ever come to having a magic wand," said Mr. Molella, the director of the Smithsonian Institution's Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation, who added that he had resisted buying an electronic organizer like the Palm Pilot until recently. "You have a sense when you hold one of these devices that you're grasping some distillation of human knowledge that represents centuries of evolution -- and here it is," he said.

And yet the companion of the British passenger, Mr. Molella noticed, was not so enthusiastic. In fact she looked like she was feeling left out and a bit annoyed. It's a look gadget-wielders might see more often if they weren't caught in an electronic trance.

As digital devices become more pervasive and more personal, the etiquette of how and when to use them -- or to babble endlessly about their features -- is still evolving.

When, for instance, is it O.K. to talk into the air, as crowds of people seem to be doing when they talk into the newly popular headsets for cellular phones?

"People freak out," said Seth Goldstein, who spearheads investments in mobile digital devices for FlatIron Partners, a venture capital firm. "But it depends on the context. Doing your e-mail just because you can whether you're in a conference room or at a dinner doesn't mean it's appropriate. But if two people take out their Pilots and are beaming information to each other at a dinner, that's more acceptable to me because it's social."

As for whether Mr. Goldstein can sneak a peek at the e-mail messages bleeping in on his wireless pager during dinner with his wife, "There are unwritten rules," he added.

Early adopters, as the consumer electronics industry refers to people who are willing to pay far more than a given electronic device will eventually cost in order to have it first, have always been a bit obnoxious. From the first proud few to replace slide rules with calculators to CB radio hobbyists to the audiophiles who paid thousands of dollars for the first CD players, gadget freaks have often seemed to exist in a jargon-filled matrix of their own, oblivious to the mundane demands of civil society.

HAT sense of belonging to an elite group who see things more clearly with the aid of electronic circuits hasn't changed. But the size of the group has, and so has the size of the gadgetry.

Nearly 4 million personal organizers like the Palm Pilot were sold in 1999, according to IDC, a research and consulting firm, with sales expected to climb to 6.3 million this year. Dozens of companies have announced plans to flood the world with "hand-held devices" including various mutations of cell phones, MP3 music players, digital cameras, e-mail pagers, Web browsers and geopositioning systems. Last week, Microsoft unveiled the newest version of its Windows CE software in an attempt to dislodge the Palm Pilot as the leading hand-held computer.

Today's technology aficionados are not the boys with the thick lenses -- they wear Armani frames. And their devices aren't at home in the garage or the rec room -- they are with them at all times, clipped, dangling or tucked away on their bodies. For those who don't care whether your hard drive is bigger than theirs, that means the relentless tech talk is hard to escape. It's there in restaurants, on trains, on the street, although the people using it often seem not to be.

"There's something about this new personal technology telling you that the real world doesn't count and what's important is this magic that I have in my pocket and my fingertip command," said Thomas Hine, a historian of popular culture who was recently forced to listen to a fellow train passenger warn eight people by cell phone that he would be an hour late. "So, you peons, you don't matter, you're bystanders."

Still, the technology that enables users to so easily slip out of touch with their physical surroundings also serves as a bridge between strangers -- and family. When emotions run high, or conversation is strained, "feeds and speeds" are a good fallback.

"For better or worse it doesn't have any politics or anything that could remotely turn anyone off," said Bob Parks, who edits the "Fetish" section of Wired magazine. "When I go home to talk to my dad we have kind of a stilted dialogue sometimes, but whenever the conversation turns to gadgets we can talk for hours."

It works particularly well while on the road, Mr. Parks added.

"You can be sitting next to someone who would never talk to you and whip out a digital camera and say 'I have a two-million pixel Cannon and instead of the Type 2 flashcard I dropped in an I.B.M. Microdrive and the great thing about it is it's got U.S.B.,' and the person will say, 'Yeah, I know exactly what you mean.' "

Perhaps. And perhaps geekspeak as small talk will eventually run its course.

"This is a newbie phenomenon," said Paul Saffo, director of the Institute for the Future. "If you're really cool you don't show your stuff off. Me, I'd never be flashing gizmos in polite society."

-- Flash (flash@flash.hq), April 22, 2000.

The Golden Age of Techno-Bores

Snobbery is a bore no matter what the discussion.

-- (doomerstomper@usa.net), April 22, 2000.