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Living The Digital Lifestyle
I am visiting my parents and family in Eastern Washington State this week and I must say about how well my notebook has served me on this trip. My notebook has been the central piece of my digital life. Some throw around the phrase Digital Lifestyle and I guess that I am an unashamed techno nerd. You might be a similar techno nerd if you are reading this on my website right now.
One thing that defines a digital lifestyle is placing digital communication higher than old analog methods. I don't really consider cellphone part of the digital lifestyle but a stop gap technology that serves to fill a hole between communication paradigms . Fax Machines were a stop gap communication paradigms before the popularization of email. CD-Rom publishing was a stop gap before the World Wide Web took off. I actually think that cell phones will be replaced with wireless internet ready PDAs that will be really cheap and very powerful. I am willing to bet that you will have a hard time finding a cell phone that you can not surf the web on in the year 2010.
I am sitting in my old high school bedroom but I am listening to MP3s of an album that I got in Seattle hundreds of miles away. Rather than carrying a suitcase of CDs I have most of my music collection at the touch of my fingertips on my notebook hard drive. I have been showing my digital picture of my girlfriend to my family members who have yet to meet her. I have every digital picture that I have taken in the past number of years on my notebook hard drive.
I don't obsess over techno gadgets for the pure fetishism but I would rather focus on what the technology will allow me to do.
The overall cost of living the digital lifestyle is cheaper than you would think. A notebook computer is cheaper than the cost of a really big screen analog TV. Playstation2 games can be around the same price of a crap pop top-40 musical act CD. A digital camera with rechargeable batteries is about the same price as an old fashion chemical camera with a couple film develop sessions. DSL or Cable Modem net access is comparable in cost to cable TV. A portable MP3 player or Minidisc is not much more than a regular stereo system.
I blame this lifestyle reading the book Microserfs by Douglas Coupland and Neromancer by William Gibson at an early age. But I don't see eBooks replacing regular dead tree edition books anytime soon but they will be a nice companion to regular books.
So there next time some one calls you a nerd you can just tell them that you are having a good time living the digital lifestyle in the information millennium.
Jake at November 29, 2003 
Nerd
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Comments
I brought Microserfs for cheap years ago and I'm on a stop-start reading of it (I started the whole thing again several times, but it's such a good reflection of the lifestyle). There were talks of a TV series being made out of it, but all I keep seeing is 'Geeks in the City'.
Hooray. I'm a techno-nerd with a Digital IQ (http://www.msnbc.com/news/987180.asp?) of 90.
Posted by: Matt at November 29, 2003 7:10 PM
Whoa! I feel the same way (about the digital communication)! Luckily, none of my analog friends really know this. Though I hate email (it's such a chore since I have to use email for work), I love IM and am actually annoyed sometimes that I can't IM my analog friends... well, maybe in the future on our 5G cell-phones, eh? ;o)
Posted by: Berklee at November 30, 2003 3:42 AM
Where in Eastern Washington?
Posted by: Mark at December 8, 2003 8:34 PM
The Tricities. More specifically Richland and West Richland WA.
Posted by: Jake at December 8, 2003 8:52 PM
yeah! I think is it at all...
a cell is not digital yet, and is so xpensive..
wait till 2028 ;)
Posted by: ratoloco at July 8, 2004 1:17 AM
