The 20th Century wasn't too bad

NO! I'm NOT getting the iPhone... uuhh at least not yet anyway. I'll wait awhile. Fixing other peoples Macs and helping them with their computer problems has taught me many lessons, and one of the most important is: I'm in no rush to get the latest toys. I'll try to stay in the 20th century just a little while longer. Yes I do have one of those teeny tiny little clip on ipods, I LOVE my X-box 360, and of course I have a cell phone, I also switched to VOIP phone service (saved me tons of money) and I even have a Palm Z22 Handheld. The problems with all these things are: they break down, you begin to depend on them more and more, and then there's learning how to figure out the device(s). I'm a guy, my first instinct is to NOT read the instructions. So I have just as much trouble as anyone else figuring this stuff out, but then I read the instructions... DUH!
for example: I have all my contacts backed up to my Palm which are a back up of my address book on my Mac G5, It's also backed up on my Powerbook and my wife's Mac (she allows me a little bit of space... just like the bedroom closet) which is also backed up on my desktop PC and my wife's laptop PC in Outlook, and I also keep a copy online somewhere, and they are also on every phone and cellphone in my home, and that's just my address book. I have one problem with all this... We had a blackout a few weeks ago and nothing worked!!! My main complaint is I don't want to depend on these things, but I have too, we all do. Oh and don't let me get started on Google! How did I live or work without them?
This has ruined my Survival Instincts. Yes I can find ANYTHING I need to find, I can get a map of where I'm going and alternate routes of how to get there, but when I go to the supermarket, I can't find the ketchup because there's no link to click, many times I've forgotten that if I can't find someone on the web, that they may still be in the Yellow or White Pages. I can't remember phone numbers any longer, I'm lucky if I can remember my own info. Oh and my handwriting, it's horrible! all those years in the fifth grade... oops, I mean in grade school, wasted!
Ok, on the upside I don't have pocketfuls of small pieces of paper with phone numbers and notes, that would find their way to my desk or my dresser (yeah, my wife really loved that). I also don't have a wallet that's 6 inches thick, filled with all sorts of business card, receipts and Lord knows what else. I don't miss those things at all.
I do have a few things that aren't high tech and I carry them everywhere I go. I carry a little notebook and a pen (why didn't I think of that before) and being that I travel on the subways and buses all over New York City I carry a little book titled NFT (http://www.notfortourists.com). It has a tiny fold out subway map, it has information and dozens of mini maps of the city and locations of important places like banks, coffeeshops, bus stops, restaurants you name it, it might be there. the only problem is, It's a BOOK, you have to turn PAGES, nothing to click. Boy it took me some effort to relearn how to use a plain book. I felt like Robert DeNiro when he played Frankenstein (if you didn't see it, don't worry, you didn't miss much). The Not For Tourist books are written for different cities, not just New York. You can find them at Amazon.com for a decent price.
I just feel that the more tech stuff I learn the dumber I'm becoming, I can't wait until I'm old and senile so I can forget it all and feel normal again.