PHIL SIMON
A few months ago, I blogged about Steven Wilson, the frontman for Porcupine Tree—one of my favorite groups. Wilson loves playing with different tools to create different soundscapes, yet hates the iPod. He destroys them for all to see.
At the same time, though, he uses interesting sites like Soundcloud to get his music to the masses beyond traditional CDs. Translation: some technology is good but other technology is bad.
Drawing the Line
While I’m nowhere near as creative as Wilson (dare to dream, right?), I have the fundamental same issue with technology. One one hand, I love my little gadgets. I dig checking out new sites. Yet, I’m a relic when it comes to books. I don’t want a Kindle or an iPad–at least yet. I like being able to be reached, yet I can’t imagine using Foursquare to let the world (or at least my “friends”) know that I’ve checked in to a coffee shop.
Oddly enough, “Drawing the Line” is an amazing song from Porcupine Tree.
Feedback
Where do you draw the line?
It is indeed complicated Phil,
My stock answer is “it depends”…
In this case my line in the sand is very wavey and if the line had a colour it would be grey. Couple of examples for you:
I too am put off by Foursquare – only for the ultra addicted to social media or for the ultra vain. However I would advise retail clients and those in hotel/catering industries to embrace it with both hands. We’re considering adopting it ourself for a forthcoming trade show. We’re interesting in seeing how it would work as a lead generator.
Chatroulette is a perfect example of tech that I would never normally touch with the longest of sticks, but if my target customer were Jonas Brother fans and perverts (not sure what product or service that could be) then again I’d be tempted to dabble and innovate.
I had similar thoughts about the iPad, but we have recently started working on a couple of apps that just so happen to be perfect for the iPad.. we of course bought one for development and it was a case of love at first sight.
I think in conclusion my answer is “never say never”
Thanks for the comment, Paul.
I never ever say never. Well, maybe once or twice.
Interesting. Even though my nickname is “AV eddy,” I’ve never been a bleeding edge kinda woman. I don’t make a habit of knowing all of the makes and model numbers of new hot gadgets. I’m on the edge of thinking of replacing my 3-yr-old Palm Treo phone and 5th gen video iPod. No Kindle for me yet. I love good ol’ books. And auto-updating my location to the world feels creepy. Still, I love Twitter, DVDs, video editing software and geek out over podcasts and video streaming.