It’s easy, sometimes, to forget that gizmos don’t have to be elaborate, expensive things with embedded application software and 45 different world-shinking, life-simplifying, William Gibson-thought-of-this-in-1985 functions. Not that there’s anything wrong with those; I love a good gee-whiz electronic gadget as much as the next guy. The very idea that a person can just look up, say, the span of years in which the F-4 Phantom II was in production (1958-1981) anywhere, at any time, without having to wait for the library to open still catches me short with amazement sometimes.

But these are dark times, and not all of us can afford to pursue the latest word in ultracompact personal electronic backup brains or super-high-resolution home theater gear with umpteen-watt wireless Dolby surround speakers. What’s a gizmo lover to do when all the buzzworthy gizmos are out of reach?

Some people find some smaller bit of technology to focus their addiction on. My mother, for instance, has a curious fixation with USB flash drives. She has dozens of them, more than she’ll ever have any actual need for. White ones, black ones, pink ones, ones with store logos on them, ones with clever rotating covers, even one that looks like an old-fashioned Eberhard Faber Pink Pearl eraser. (She doesn’t have one of the ones that look like a severed USB cable yet, but she knows of them and wants one very much.) Whenever we’re out shopping, if we go anywhere that sells flash drives, she’ll leave with at least one. It’s like a compulsion.

But I don’t sneer at that, because I’ve carried on my own minor-tech-widget love affair for years. In my case, it’s not flash drives. It’s flashlights.
Continue reading →