Q: Are you a Luddite? Or do you have the latest and greatest technology?
A: I don’t like change. It’s in my nature to immediately oppose any update to anything. It’s not that I’m not open to improvement, rather I’m an ‘if it’s not broken, don’t fix it’ person. For example, while everyone spent the last ten years updating their phones to smart phones, iPhones, Androids, I stuck with my Samsung flip phone. All I could do was make a phone call and send a text, but that’s all I needed. I always managed to find a way around the need for carrying a ‘computer in a purse’. I had to buy an android phone last year, but only because I couldn’t find another flip phone, when my old one finally died. And yes, I love it now that I’m used to it, but it got yelled at a few times in the learning process. It’s the same with my laptop. It took me two years to convince myself to buy a laptop for my writing, and it’s still the only one I’ve ever owned. It’s twelve years old, had three hard-drive replacements, and I’m still running the 2007 version of Word. Will I update? Not until my laptop breathes its last breath. Do I feel behind the times? Nope. Until my situation changes and I need something flashier, I’m happy to keep things as they are. If the worst happens, there’s always pen and paper, of which I have plenty.
Pauline Yates’s story “The Secret Keeper”
in Metaphorosis Friday, 4 June 2021.
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