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evilme Gareth Davies is a transplanted Welshman, currently living in the sprawling metropolis, known as Los Angeles, California.

Being a lifelong Sci-fi fan, technology has always been an asset and never a hindrance in his life. However he has struggled over the years to find his computing Nirvana, and now believes he has found it with Mac OS X; although the path that lead him there was a little bumpy to say the least.

Gareth has worked extensively with all major PC Operating systems, and still harbors some computing soft spots for OS/2 Warp and BeOS.

photo-50 Dorian Bryan is a native of South Wales in the UK.

He’s just your average tech obsessed geek. He’s been salivating over new technology or as long as he can remember. He really appreciates good design and well thought out ideas and innovations.

Mac user by choice, Windows user by necessity, (having to work for a living just sucks, don’t it). Speaking of work, he’s a fibre installation engineer for a large telco.

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Technophile

tech·no·phile (těk'nə-fīl')n. One who has a love of or enthusiasm for technology, especially computers and high technology
tech'no·phil'i·a (-fĭl'ē-ə) n., tech'no-phil'i·ac' (-āk') adj.

This should be recognized condition, for which unfortunately, there is no twelve step plan. It is condition that keeps sufferers in a constant state of agitation and penury.

We technophiliacs have to have the latest and greatest gizmo, and when this latest and greatest gadget enters the orbit of our obession. Well, we cannot possibly see how our lives could be complete with out it. We watch news feeds for release dates and rumours. We visit fora where we disect the rumours, then make up some of our own. We bore our uninfected relatives with endless speculation, about how great this thing will be, and the difference it will make to our lives. The question of need, is something we will ignore or, distort our personal reality to fit. So we impatiently wait, cash at the ready, ready to pounce on the desired object.

Finally the day arrives, it is ours. We protect it, like a lioness with her cubs. We caress it, and cajole it into life. We import, we export, we sync, we setup, we install and we upgrade. We admire the form and design, the smooth casing or interface, or the plethora of buttons, (real, clickable or touchable).

And then, we live with our latest thing. We get to know it. Its foibles, what works, as advertised, what doesn't. What didn't make it out of beta, what did and what shouldn't have. Then we begin to find fault, we nitpick. We go back to the fora and find people who have the same 'faults' or problems, and club together to solve them, whether real or imagined, they will not beat us. We find work arounds and fixes and hacks, and our gizmos are perfect. Well, almost, nearly, practically working perfectly. And we are happy. Well almost happy. Definitely not unhappy. But we are temporarily sated.

Except....

Except we have seen something, no not something, the thing. This thing will be it. It will make your life complete. And so the cycle begins again. We want, we have and we want again. This is typical addictive behaviour.

If we are lucky we have a particular fixation on the technology spectrum, computers perhaps. Unlucky victims are vulnerable to the entire range of tech. From mobiles and iPods (insert generic player name here) to computers and TV's, and everything inbetween. There is something new and exciting at every click. Hence the constant state of agitation and penury.

As to a cure, a twelve step plan to fight the addiction. Well, lets be honest even if we had a plan, it would be way more then twelve measly steps, this plan would be completely overspecced. Us geeks could not accept a with a cure, which could work for everyone of us in twelve steps. We would have to have work arounds, fixes and hacks.

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Technophile