I was splitting some wood using a rather old but ingenious piece of technology. It’s called an axe. A splitting axe, to be specific, and if you really know your axes, this one has splitting wedges that push out when embedded rapidly into the wood. The handle was a nice carbon mixture that was good and stiff.

All these innovations helped me in the competition I was engaged in–man against machine. I lasted half an hour before admiring the way the log splitting machine didn’t get tired. Ok, it was ten minutes.

The machine could split logs that an axe only dreams of splitting. It didn’t care about the number of knots or how twisted the log was. These are things you care very much about when splitting by hand.

My torso is about as thick as the arms of the local loggers here in cottage country, and at least half as strong, which is saying a lot about the strength of my torso.

There’s a lot of pride about the technology the locals use up here. I admire the skidders, tractors, pick-up trucks, outdoor wood furnaces, and of course, log splitters.

But there’s a lot of pride in the technology they don’t use as well.

The local baker bragged to me the other day: “My wife and I haven’t got a cell phone because there’s just not enough coverage up here.” True enough.

A logger said to me, “oh, you work on computers, eh? Well, I for one don’t care much for computers.” Them’s fightin’ words, but when I looked at the size of his arms and I was willing to agree that computers were not much to care for.

Computers are catching on up in this area, though. People are starting to get as excited about email as the rest of the world was back in 1992. If you go into town you can actually get high speed internet at the York Street Internet Café, which expanded this year.

I helped out the owner of that café last summer and watched vacationers as they could hardly wait to unlatch and open the screens on their laptops, going into the internet quickly and once there, enjoying the experience before finally uploading all the email they had saved up while at the cottage and away from the web.

Teenaged camp counsellors had gone without chatting online for a whole week, and sometimes a week and two days! They could hardly wait to come into civilization where they could text each other.

Where the city folk seem to be proud of all their gadgets, the country folk here are equally proud that they get along “without all the trappings of the city.” They almost seem to outdo each other on the subject. If one said that they use their computer just to do their finances, another would brag that they only use their old Windows 95 computer for games, and finally another would one-up the rest by saying he didn’t need a computer because he can balance his check book and deal his own solitaire cards.

All hell breaks loose when I bring out my PDA phone. “What ya need that thing for?” I get asked. “All I need is a cell phone. Don’t need all those fancy gadgets.”

Is it true they don’t need these things? Are they actually better without the fancy gadgets? Let’s pit them against a gadget master like me in a couple of scenarios similar to my back breaking competition with their log splitter.

Here’s the first scenario: I am on the road and I need to contact someone else who is on the road. Hmm, what should I do? I know! Use my cell phone to call her cell phone. Meanwhile, Mr. Technophobe is still looking for a pay phone that works.

Another scenario: You’re at work and your spouse is in another time zone on a conference. You remember that Uncle Bert lives in the same city your spouse is in and you haven’t talked to him for years. Your company has a strict “no long distance calls” policy. Mr. Technophobe is searching for his calling card that he forgot at home. Ms Technowiz is logging onto their Skype phone and using a few well placed Skype Out minutes to phone Uncle Bert and your spouse at the hotel (who had different plans for the evening–but that’s another story).

Perhaps I just live a different life. They probably don’t have the need to call someone who is on the road or at a conference. They probably actually believe that if it is important the caller will call back. They most likely know how to live without a jug of milk that would not have been forgotten if someone had a cell phone on the way home from work.

Are these country bumpkins telling us about technology in our society? There certainly seems to be the need to plan ahead more thoroughly without cell phones, text messaging, and VOIP. In the examples above, if there wasn’t the safety net of having a cell phone with you, you would probably think about the things you need in the evening before leaving home in the morning. You probably don’t get on the road without considering every contingency or without taking along a well thought out shopping list. Uncle Bert would either have been thought about ahead of time, or shrugged off (which your spouse may prefer).

In other words, you would have to use your brain more, even though we seem to be stressing our brains’ abilities to figure out the new technologies we purchase. We would be more focussed, self-reliant, and trusting.

Instead, we multitask, rely on technology, and make sure our spouse hasn’t forgotten to put the casserole in the oven or our subordinates are on-target while we’re on holidays.

Ah, such a simple life it must without communications technology. I’ll leave them to the gadgets they do enjoy, such as log splitters and portable saw mills. And if I need a cord of wood at the cottage for the winter, I’ll just have to go over and ask politely for them to deliver the firewood, while discretely hiding that cell phone contraption of mine.

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