How to determine if technology has taken over your life
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  1   Your stationery is more cluttered than Warren Beatty's address
      book. The letterhead lists a fax number, e-mail addresses for two
      on-line services, and your Internet address, which spreads across
      the breadth of the letterhead and continues to the back.  In
      essence, you have conceded that the first page of any letter you
      write *is* letterhead.

  2   You can no longer sit through an entire movie without having at
      least one device on your body beep or buzz.

  3   You need to fill out a form that must be typewritten, but you
      can't because there isn't one typewriter in your house -- only
      computers with laser printers.

  4   You think of the gadgets in your office as "friends," but you
      forget to send your father a birthday card.

  5   You disdain people who use low Baud rates.

  6   When you go into a computer store, you eavesdrop on a salesperson
      talking with customers -- and you butt in to correct him and
      spend the next twenty minutes answering the customers' questions,
      while the salesperson stands by silently, nodding his head.

  7   You use the phrase "digital compression" in a conversation
      without thinking how strange your mouth feels when you say it.

  8   You constantly find yourself in groups of people to whom you say
      the phrase "digital compression."  Everyone understands what you
      mean, and you are not surprised or disappointed that you don't
      have to explain it.

  9   You know Bill Gates' e-mail address, but you have to look up your
      own social security number.

  10  You stop saying "phone number" and replace it with "voice
      number," since we all know the majority of phone lines in any house 
      are plugged into contraptions that talk to other contraptions.

  11  You sign Christmas cards by putting :-) next to your signature.

  12  Off the top of your head, you can think of nineteen keystroke
       symbols that are far more clever than :-).

  13  You back up your data every day.

  14  You think jokes about being unable to program a VCR are stupid.

  15  On vacation, you are reading a computer manual and turning the
      pages faster than everyone else who is reading John Grisham novels.

  16  The thought that a CD could refer to finance or music rarely
      enters your mind.

  17  You go to computer trade shows and map out your path of the
      exhibit hall in advance.  But you cannot give someone directions  
      to your house without looking up the street names.

  18  You would rather get more dots per inch than miles per gallon.

  19  You become upset when a person calls you on the phone to sell you
      something, but you think it's okay for a computer to call and
      demand that you start pushing buttons on your telephone to
      receive more information about the product it is selling.

  20  You know without a doubt that disks come in five-and-a-quarter
      and three-and-a-half-inch sizes.

  21  You own a set of itty-bitty screw-drivers and you actually know
      where they are.

  22  While contemporaries swap stories about their recent hernia
      surgeries, you compare mouse-induced index-finger strain with a
      nine-year-old.

  23  You are so knowledgeable about technology that you feel secure
      enough to say "I don't know" when someone asks you a technology
      question instead of feeling compelled to make something up.

  24  You rotate your screen savers more frequently than your
       automobile tires.

  25  You have a functioning home copier machine, but every toaster you
      own turns bread into charcoal.

  26  You have ended friendships because of irreconcilably different
      opinions about which is better -- the track ball or the track
      *pad*.

  27  You understand all the jokes in this message.  If so, my friend,
      technology has taken over your life.  We suggest, for your own
      good, that you go lie under a tree and write a haiku.  And don't
      use a laptop.

  28  You email this message to your friends over the net. You'd never
      get around to showing it to them in person or reading it to them on
      the phone. In fact, you have probably never met most of these
      people face-to-face.