Early and Late Adopters

I have a couple of buddies (Scott and John) who are the epitome of earlier adopters. When the iPhone came out -John was waiting in line. Anything relatively cool in the computer world, Scott will try it out or try to get it - upon wife approval and acceptance. Nothing like being on the leading (or bleeding) edge of technology.

I on the other hand am a relative late adopter. During the late 80s and earlier 90s, man, I tell you I was an earlier adopter. But a company called Microsoft turned me off after having numerous issues and headaches with DOS version 4.0 and 6.0 or any version of software that ended in dot zero.

I am such a late adopter that I personally do not even have a cell phone. Work has one for me, but it is for work. You know, not having a cell phone is not such a bad thing. I thoroughly enjoy going to the beach and not having a signal. I can't hear about what broke or what absolutely needs to be done by tomorrow and I need to do it. The sound of silence (or the sound of crashing waves) is music to my ears.

Don't get me wrong, I would be lost without a computer or some kind of computer device to help keep track of things. But I don't necessarily need the latest greatest thing anymore to make me feel good about myself. I don't always have to keep up with the Joneses.

I have an electronic organizer, but it does not connect to the internet and ping me ever time I have mail. It does not double as a phone. It keeps addresses and phone numbers primarily and what appointments are coming up.

At work, I actually use notebooks and pencils; I may be one of 3 or 4 people who still use wooden pencils that need to be sharpened. This weekend, our computers and computer network are being migrated. Some people were completely lost without being able to use their computers to figure out what needed to be done next. I had my notebook and it contained what I had to do and where I had to go - all was good with the world. Mind you I did have a desktop computer to perform my required tasks on, so I did not have to go through withdrawals.

There is nothing wrong with being an early adopter; I actually encourage people to do it, so I get a finely tuned device or piece of software by the time I am ready to buy it. I don't know if I will be buying a cell phone any time soon, as I kind of enjoy the 1o to 15% of my day that people can't necessarily get a hold of when I am sleeping, commuting or goofing off.

Make someone's day and perform a random act of kindness. They might really need it if they are a really earlier adopter.