25 Signs Technology Has Taken Over Your Life...
Your stationery is more cluttered than Warren Beatty's address book.
The letterhead lists a fax number, e-mail addresses for two on-line services,
and your Internet address, which spreads across the breadth of the letterhead
and continues to the back. In essence, you have conceded that the first page of
any letter you write *is* letterhead.
You have never sat through an entire movie without having at
least one device on your body beep or buzz.
You need to fill out a form that must be typewritten, but you
can't because there isn't one typewriter in your house -- only computers
with laser printers.
You think of the gadgets in your office as "friends",
but you forget to send your father a birthday card.
You disdain people who use low baud rates.
When you go into a computer store, you eavesdrop on a
salesperson talking with customers -- and you butt in to correct him
and spend the next twenty minutes answering the customers' questions,
while the salesperson stands by silently, nodding his head.
You stop saying "phone number" and replace it with
"voice number", since we all know the majority of phone lines
in any house are plugged into contraptions that talk to other contraptions.
You sign Christmas cards by putting :-) next to your signature.
Off the top of your head, you can think of nineteen keystroke
symbols that are far more clever than :-).
You back up your data every day.
You think jokes about being unable to program a VCR are stupid.
On vacation, you are reading a computer manual and turning the
pages faster than everyone else who is reading John Grisham novels.
The thought that a CD could refer to finance or music rarely
enters your mind.
You go to computer trade shows and map out your path of the
exhibit hall in advance. But you cannot give someone directions to your
house without looking up the street names.
You would rather get more dots per inch than miles per gallon.
You become upset when a person calls you on the phone to
sell you something, but you think it's okay for a computer to call and
demand that you start pushing buttons on your telephone to receive more
information about the product it is selling.
You own a set of itty-bitty screw-drivers and you actually
know where they are.
While contemporaries swap stories about their recent hernia
surgeries, you compare mouse-induced index-finger strain with a nine-year-old.
You are so knowledgeable about technology that you feel secure
enough to say "I don't know" when someone asks you a technology
question instead of feeling compelled to make something up.
You rotate your screen savers more frequently than your
automobile tires.
You have a functioning home copier machine, but every toaster
you own turns bread into charcoal.
You have ended friendships because of irreconcilably
different opinions about which is better -- the track ball or the track *pad*.
You regularly write sentences containing more than four three
letter abbreviations.
You don't notice that you regularly write sentences containing
more than four three letter abbreviations.
You understand all the jokes in this message. If so, my friend,
technology has taken over your life. We suggest, for your own good, that
you go lie under a tree and write a haiku. And don't use a laptop.
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