A tech reporter who doesn’t use much tech

David Streitfeld, a technology reporter for the New York Times in San Francisco, writes about how little technology he uses.

Streitfeld writes, “One of the great victories of the tech industry was insisting that if you didn’t love its products, and by extension the companies themselves, you were not fit to cover it. I never understood how that edict gained traction. We don’t think that crooks make the best crime reporters.

“I took my inspiration from writers I admired — Philip K. Dick, Ursula K. Le Guin, Don DeLillo, Barry Malzberg. They were all low-tech people. Le Guin didn’t drive. DeLillo doesn’t do email. Dick barely left his apartment. Malzberg lives in New Jersey. Yet they foresaw how technology would reshape society better than any of the geniuses in Silicon Valley.

“‘What technology can do becomes what we need it to do,’ DeLillo said. Le Guin observed: ‘The internet just invites crap from people.’ Those quotes sum up the last 20 years.”

Read more here.