Hopeless

I try to stay reasonably aware of the direction of technology and its use and potential.  But there's just so much, and it's moving so quickly.  I know a little about blogs, a little less about wikis.  I've messed around with chat architecture and understand a bit about its deployment and its limitations.  In the old days I used message boards and belonged to listservs.  I use AIM and I text message on my phone.  I get RSS, and why syndication technologies are so darn cool.  I've played around with a couple of different aggregators.  Have messed with some collaborative project management software that's underwhelmed me so far.  I used to use ActiveWords; need to reinstall it.  I know about, but haven't sampled, podcasting.  I'm vaguely aware of del.icio.us .  I was on Friendster but quit when they fired that blogger, and have dutifully signed up when invited to Orkut and LinkedIn.  Does anybody actually use those services?  I've done online dating.  Signed up for Furl but don't use it.  Have briefly looked at Flikr, but not used it.  Have installed Skype but need a headset before I can really use it.  I've never played an online game or done MOOs or MUDs or their present-day counterparts.  And it seems like every day there's a new something or other.  Just being fluent in the language of these collaborative technologies is perhaps too ambitious a goal. 

Comments

[turboglacier]

Ludditeland is peacable and welcoming. Come over and visit any time. When you have no technology, you cannot be afraid of failing with it.

[Buzz Bruggeman]

Christmas present coming your way...

Buzz

[Dave Mann]

Can you recommend a good RSS feed reader?

[A. Rickey]

Sherry:

Just remember that the day when technology becomes more than a means to an end, you've made a fetish of it. As the scope of technology expands, some of what you "need" to know will fall by the wayside to be replaced by something new, while other things will simply never appeal to you. And some things are so much better without the technology anyway: though I'm probably revealing a little too much here, there is no MUD or MOO that holds a candle to a reasonably-told tabletop roleplaying game.

[Monjo]

If a piece of technology has survived 3 years and will surivive another 3 years AND will be useful to me, I will take advantage of it.
I think next year my dad plans to get a Mac. Depending on when we get it and when Tiger comes out the OS will have an inbuilt file search, RSS, IMs, video editing s/w, etc etc. All fine and dandy, and all pretty to look at.