A thought this morning on how we have become tied to technology, a facet I am certainly guilty, I probably check email before I make coffee and its the first thing I check when I get home. Equally I bought an ipod maybe two years ago and without it in my car am not quite sure what to do, trying to remember which presets on my radio are which stations.

But there's some areas of life newer is I don't think better as I miss part of the experience. An example is that I do have a Palm Tungsten, in the past I've even used it heavily, but found myself migrating back to an old battered leather Covey organizer, with a fountain pen. I just seem to be able to order notes better in meetings that way.

Though my new purchase is even better, a small black leather notebook called a moleskin www.modoemodo.com

Really quite a wonderful thing, where taking notes becomes a tactile experience, from unfastening the elastic holding the book shut, to using the fabric page marker aside to open at a blank page, again out comes the fountain pen, freshly filled with ink, a very strange feeling after we have been conditioned by years of tech, but pleasurable none the less as you think of generations of writers such as Hemmingway who used the exact same style of notebook. Talking of whom I was recently given a selection of classic books including several of his by a neighbour who was clearing out his parent's garage, so after Kerouac's "Satori in Paris", that will be the next book to read - and I thought I would be reading trash novels on my train rides home.

Of course, given my description of that notebook, I sit writing this on a Mac Powerbook, in and of itself an experience, different to a Windows PC or laptop, which I just view as a utilitarean box. Jobs and Jonathan Ely's ergonomic design and vision creating an altogether different experience to using a computer, very much the way things should be, as valid as a tool for ideas, work and play as the Moleskins delightful simplicity. To where when you use it, you forget you are using a computer, and it just becomes an extension of your mind and fingers.

So maybe I'm not a curmudgeonly retro-grouch after all.