Confessions of a Late Adopter
You’ve heard of early adopters, right? Excited about new technology, always eager for the next great gadget? Then there are the total refuseniks, the ones who aren’t on Facebook or who don’t have cell phones. Somewhere in the middle, but closer to the second group, are people like me. My family got its first computer when I was still a kid. But it was always an older computer. I remember using WordPerfect 5.1, orange text on a black screen, for years. Yep, that was on DOS. The other day someone in my household ran into computer problems and ended up at a DOS prompt, and then at a DOS Shell menu…cue the nostalgia! I remember first using email in DOS, and being annoyed when the Internet started going graphic and our computer didn’t have that capability so it got harder and harder to surf the web… I got my first digital camera and my first cell phone in 2004 — and there was no going back. Those two things were just too convenient. No more paying to develop tons of rolls of photos after a long trip? The ability to phone anyone…from anywhere? Eureka! Still I remained a late adopter. I got a laptop in 2005 only because an acquaintance was selling one, an ereader in 2011 only because it was a gift. (The laptop was another game-changer; the ereader less so, although I now read about 1/3 of my books in ebook form and my bookshelves thank me for…