“Check out my new wireless PDA -mp3 player-coffee maker-garage door opener!” If you have friends like that, chances are they are obsessed with new gadgets, toys and software. They possess (or are possessed by) technological gems such as Mp3-playing toaster ovens, double-display optical pens with 6 gigabyte memory capacity or the latest software to fix something very complicated.
But before you socially ostracize your geeky friends, behold. This short “how-to-identify a technophile guide” will help you to understand the strange world of technophelia.
Technophelia is the obsession with technology, gadgets or software applications. The permanent fixation of technophiliacs revolves around the bits and bytes, wires and circuits, as well as screens and displays.
With the information age booming and social network era rising, people became intensively involved into technology, networking as well as advancing gadgets. A fatal combination of cultural degradation and electrical domination sucked people right into the realms of computers, computer games and social networks. The result was the obsession with these technologies.
But just as in any other obsession, technophiles have different grades of obsession or “geekness levels”, as I call them.
The first geekness level is the game and facebook technophile. This early stage of a technophile is characterized by a slight, but typical predomination of computer games and very active “social networking”. The internet gives the technophiles the opportunity and the ulterior demand to be connected with other people all the time and share each second of “digital quality time” with the rest of the world. People who spend several hours daily playing World of Warcraft or who obsessively check their facebook page every minute are typical first graders.
Level two of geekness is getting more serious. Here we find people, who not only master online gaming, chatting and such, but also possess fancy tools and gadgets that supposedly make their digital life easier for them. They buy new equipment or software packages that help them dealing with their daily flood of information or challenges of the technological age. If your friend or relative has GPS-digital camera with direct uplink to online web-albums, he or she is in that group.
But beyond the level of making things easier is geekness level type three. The main characteristic is that people start to suffer through lack of technology in other areas. That is possible. When the obsession with technology becomes all-devouring and consuming, the third-level-type of technophiliac actually complains that technology hasn´t taken over all parts of living. They appreciate and demand the advantages of up-to-speed gadgets, but want more in order to be completely happy. People who have the new 3G-S iphone with approximately 400 different applications and who complain that they don´t have an “app” for cooking their Kraft-dinners are suffering of level 3 geekness.
And then there is the final stage: the alpha-geek. He is the digital 800-pound gorilla in his technological environment. The alpha-technophiliac is beyond suffering or running behind trends. They are the setting them through their posts on social networking sites like “digg” or their plethora of YouTube clips. These guys are seldom and hard to find. And if you would meet one, you probably wouldn´t understand them because all they speak is binary code. You would say “hi”, and they respond “1001000 01001001”. Impressive, you think? Alpha-geek resumes read under the section language skills: fluent in C++, html and flash.
Now you ask yourself: “Wow. That is so cool. How can I become an alpha-technophiliac?” Spend some time with your geeky friends. You will have the chance to rank up in the geekness ladder and you technophile friends will hopefully appreciate the human language again. It is a win-win.
