Early Adopter Disease

Here’s some symptoms of early adopter’s disease…

  • you subscribe to multiple tech blog feeds.  Even worse, you follow all their twitter feeds.  Even worse than that, you are a fan of their facebook page. Oh and  by “multiple”, I mean so many that you have 100 new posts an hour coming into your feed reader.
  • All non essential activity stops and you drool when watching an announcement on the latest gadget.  Essential activity is breathing.
  • When a new gadget is released you read every article that get’s written on it.  Anything else is old news.  What oil spill?
  • You know of gadgets that no one else you know has heard of.
  • You begin a lot of conversations with, “Hey did you hear about this? ___________”  and proceed to describe in glorious detail the incredible features of the gadget that will save the world.  Well, at least make the world a better place to live.  Well, at least make YOUR world a better place to live….
  • Things aren’t cool, they are magical.
  • You don’t understand why people get frustrated when something doesn’t work.  Your patience level is god-like when working with new stuff.  Which is probably why….
  • …waiting in lines is your favorite sport.
  • You sign up for all the beta stuff.  Even worse you sign up for alpha stuff.
  • You know what that means.
  • Every outlet in your house is taken up by the power bricks of your stuff.
  • When you are without internet access, you’re paralyzed and cannot do anything.  (This is actually a symptom for a few other diseases too – like internet occuporitus syndrome)
  • You see nothing wrong with people who buy tickets for this (and would be one of the first ones to do it if it wasn’t for all the money you spend on other stuff, like new gadgets and things…)

Do you have the disease?  Is there anything else you would add to the list?

  1. Thanks for the post Darren. There's hope for me yet. I only mildly fit the description above.

    I had to laugh at you mentioning the "magical" thing. Lately, I find the use of the word "magical" as used by Apple to be a little creepy! Add to that the teary look of wonder and awe on the faces of Apple spokesmen. I'm still trying to figure it out. But it's mildly disturbing.
    My recent post Audio Drum Loops Tutorial 1 p4

  2. Given a certain level of technological superiority (over those you are trying to impress/coerce) many things appear magical. Take some of your gadgets into the back country of Borneo and watch the reactions… they believe in magic.

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