I got the idea for this column from Dennis Drogseth, who has been around in our industry as long as I have, working at IBM, Cabletron, and now as an analyst for Enterprise Management Associates. He told me that he still was a Luddite, even though Dennis is one of those people that can actually speak about routers and SNMP. So I thought up this little quiz that you can give your friends and see how you stack up on the tech scale. Okay, print this out, pick up your number two pencils, and no looking at your neighbor’s paper.
1. How do you communicate with your teenagers?
(a) Still talk to them f2f
(b) Call them on their cells to find out where they want to you to think they are
(c I M them from work when they get home from school
(d) Message them on Facebook or Myspace
(e) Not allowed to connect to them via Facebook or Myspace
(f) Who can talk to their teens anyway?
2. How did you find your present job?
(a) Am self-employed, the ultimate job 2.0 lifestyle
(b) Found it through LinkedIn
(c) Found it through Craigslist
(d) Did all those annoying exercises in “Parachute” and they actually helped
3. When did you last post to your blog?
(a) Last hour
(b) Last 24 hours
(c) Last week
(d) I don’t have a blog and don’t want to start now
(e) Blogs are so yesterday, now I have my own Facebook network and they create all my content for me
4. How many iPods do/have you own(ed)?
(a) Have an iPhone, who needs an iPod?
(b) Have two (or more) – one for exercise, one for cross-country travel
(c) Have one, and replace it every time Apple announces a new version
(d) Don’t want to spend the dough and bought a cheaper MP3 player
(e) Still buy music CDs and listen to them the old-fashioned way
5. How do you watch most of your movies?
(a) Download them legally from Netflix, iTunes or Amazon
(b) Download them via a P2P, you don’t want to know the details
(c) Rent them from Netflix, just upped my monthly plan
(d) Have a DVR and love it
(e) Just bought a DVD for the car to keep the kids occupied
(f) Stay up late and have watched every “Die Hard” at least five times
(g) Go to the movie theaters and suffer with the vast unwashed masses
6. How many speakers are connected to your living room music system?
(a) 7 (and more in other rooms of the house too)
(b) I thought I was pretty cool with 5
(c) Listen to The Who on just 2
(d) Just the one that came with the TV set, thank you very much
7. Do you have more computers than people at home?
(a) Yes, significantly more and it is pretty damn depressing when you think about it
(b) Yes, but only counting the work laptop(s)
(c) No, we are one-to-one
(d) No, fewer PCs than people and have to fight over who gets to use the laptop
8. Do you have a NAS device at home?
(a) Yes, it is the only way to safely store my music, videos, and photos
(b) No, but I do my backups online do I get points for that?
(c) What’s a NAS?
9. How many online photo-sharing services have you used?
(a) Several, and I upload photos to an electronic photo frame too for grandma
(b) Several but they all have issues
(c) One and I am happy with it
(d) Why did Yahoo get rid of theirs, it was better than Flickr anyway
(e) None, still taking my film to the drugstore
10. How do you look up phone numbers?
(a) Bigbook.com or similar service
(b) I go to the company’s Web site and root around for their contact info
(c) I just Google the company
(d) I have that big printed thing from the phone company somewhere around here
(e) I don’t care if it costs me a $1, I still call 411.
11. How do you book your airline flights?
(a) I use Kayak or something equivalent to find the best prices
(b) I go directly to the airlines’ Web sites
(c) I call my travel agent
(d) I don’t want to fly anywhere this summer and deal with the crowds
12. How many digital cameras does your family own?
(a) More cameras than people
(b) Fewer cameras than people
(c) One-to-one, but I still can’t find a camera that has decently short shutter delay.
13. Are you the master of your own domain?
(a) Own several domains, in the process of consolidating them all under one registrar because it is getting out of hand
(b) Yes, own my own domain and run the family Web site keeping track of everyone too
(c) I am a GoDaddy reseller and will gladly sell you a domain if you don’t have one yourself
(d) No, just use hotmail or Yahoo and am happy with that
One reader writes in his own question:
Q: Are you looking for answers?
(a) Oh, yes, I’ve got an assistant who will be happy to do all the work for me.
(b) My computer is so smart it already knows what you are going to answer
(c) No, it was just a rhetorical questionnaire, what are you, some kind of an idiot? You think I have time for this kind of stuff?
(d) oy, not another wiseass!
Another reader admonished me for not putting the scoring sheet together. Here are her suggestions:
Obviously you haven’t spent enough time reading women’s magazines — you need a scoring scale. Sort of on the order of “how luddite are you on a scale of 1-10” or “is he really a luddite? score your man” If you answered all As, you’re so plugged in it would require major surgery to remove your electronic devices; all Bs, you’re in the 21st century and changing fast; all Cs, well, at least you’ve made it to the 20th century; all Ds, Es, and Fs — what’s a Luddite anyway?
Or you could do it on a point system — assign yourself 5 points for every A, 4 for every B, 3 for every C, etc and then, if you scored 50-65, you’re streaming screaming tech; 40-50, with a little time and extra effort you too could be screamin’; 30-40, 20-30, and below 20 would be a Dud Ludd…
Of course this would require you doing some rearranging of your questions and answers and would absolutely take more time than its worth — but as it stands it is a fun little exercise.