Hierarchy of a Technology Freak

As I was taking a picture of all my travel gadgets and writing my inaugural post in litratista.org about Photo Backup, I was scared that I was a gadget technofreak but I also realized that there is a higher level that one transcends to. You realize the essence of technology and suddenly, I had an epiphany on modern technology. Based on my corporate experience and own technology adoption, here are the hierarchy of Technology Freak:

Hierarchy of a Technology Freak
1. Dinosaurs
2. Practical Tech Consumer
3. Early Adopters
4. Technology Freak
5. Tech-inspired Artists

DINOSAURS. These are people who no matter what you do, they don’t want to adopt technology. I’ve seen a lot of these in the corporate setting where an executive even refused to use a laptop or delegates all his technology-related activities to his admin assistant. Typically, these are people born in the 50’s and 60’s. These are survivors who don’t want to change and in the verge of becoming extinct.

PRACTICAL TECH CONSUMERS. These people who adopts technology for practicality purposes because it is needed. For example, my dad who were forced to learn to use the mobile phone and to text because everybody has one. Also, he realized the benefits of the technology because he can now communicate to his relatives in the province. On corporate terms, these are the people who started to use a laptop or PC because he needs to do his monthly letter or powerpoint. Some would realize the benefits of having email anytime anywhere with the use of blackberry. These are people who starts to blog and releases there writing works over the internet. Lastly, these people also wait for the hype of a new technology to die down or wait for a new model to be released before buying one. Most of the people in this planet belongs to this category.

EARLY ADOPTERS. These are people who buy and use technology to be the first to have bragging rights that he is a tech savvy person. There are a lot of these people in the philippines who would change mobile phone every 6 months. We can also blame this to Apple who releases an Ipod Nano and Ipod Video in a few months time after releasing Ipod Shuffle and Ipod Photo. More and more people are elevating into this stage and takes advance of the newest technology specially as they upgrade their phone, PDA, laptops, PC or digital camera.

TECHNOLOGY FREAK You know that you belong to this if you start naming all your gadgets. You manage them as a portfolio or a family where you decide to collect them. There is no end for you to get satisfied and you constantly upgrade not for the sake of bragging but to take advantage of new functionalities. You begin to fully leverage technology, know to make them work together and betting on future trends (web 2.0, wireless technology, SEO, etc.). You don’t consider technology as an expense but a value contributor to your overall work or business in the web. I belong to this stage and starting to evolve to the next stage.

TECH-INSPIRED ARTIST. You realized that technology has an inherent issue on its archival nature — will your technology last 100 years? are you sure that your digital photos will be there after 100 years? Would your blog entries be forever archived in your blog database? Also, you realized that technology is used for collaboration, networking, reinventing productivity, and content-based business. You start to explore to keep your ideas in a moleskine journal instead of a PDA, you start to backup your digital photos by printing photo arts / mosaics, you start to value antique technology (Nokia 2100, toy cameras, old photographs ) and you are attracted to film based photography like lomography. You start to write in your blog precious thoughts and covert them in a novel or a book. You are attracted to the camera tossing photos and you think its brilliant and call it an art.

There’s no right or wrong stages, it is just an awareness of where you are, and where you want to be. So where are you in the hierarchy?