This is Technology Bytes, episode 146, for December 21st, 2025.
Technology Bytes is a microcast where I share brief bytes on interesting technology.
Enjoy, and here we go.
I’m 146 weeks into the recording of this microcast, and just by its name, Technology Bytes, and by the intro that I say every week, I have spent all of those weeks talking about technology that is coming, technology that I don’t understand, technology that I use and enjoy, technology that I use and don’t enjoy, covering the gambit.
Lots of Apple stuff, I recognize that, and lots of home smart things because I enjoy that.
The coverage has been, well, not unique because sometimes I talk about the same things, just a different aspect because time has passed.
But today I’m going to do something a little bit different, and I am going to talk about the analog world.
A number of tech pendants that I listen to over time and have listened to for some time seem to be drawn back into pieces of the analog world, even though they spend much of their time and make their money from the technology world.
So there’s always something that they say feels more grounded, feels more, I don’t know if the word is real, but there’s something that draws them back to the analog, and I was wondering if that happens to me.
I started to think about what, if anything, I do in the analog world, and wow, that’s quite a search.
Maybe it didn’t take very long, just kind of thinking back.
It’s interesting, when I get to work, there’s a number of things that I do.
So as I unload my backpack, I put a ballpoint pen, it’s one I bought from Apple Campus when my wife took me there for my 50th birthday, so it’s not tech, but it’s still Apple gear, and I clip that in my pocket, my right pocket on the inside.
And then I set up my laptop, I set up my iMac, I set up my iPad to get started for my day.
I have the pen because, I don’t know, every once in a while I have to write something down.
I wish I didn’t have to do it, I wish I could capture the thought and just send it to whoever, but not everybody in my work world is on the Teams platform because they are the people that touch the product, that make it move through the factory.
They are using tech to do it, but my communication with them is, if not verbal, then a brief written thing.
Hey, can you look at this PO?
Oh, here’s an order number that I would like you to go back and try to explore and see if you can figure out what happened, or different things like that.
So I have a stack of basically scrap paper in my office.
It’s cut into a 4x4 square or something like that, and I just use that to write things down.
So, not really, I mean it’s analog, it is, but that’s about the only thing I can think of.
I don’t write letters, I just don’t do much in the analog world.
If I read, I’m reading on my iPad.
This past six weeks, once a week, we’re doing some training at work on some management training, and the person that’s doing that leading gave us a book to read.
So, well, because it’s training, I have to read it.
And I didn’t choose to buy the digital version because I’m cheap.
I don’t want to buy it because I’m not sure I’m ever going to look at that book again.
So that happened in the analog world.
But in general, the analog world escapes me.
I don’t use it for anything repetitive.
I don’t use it for anything that has to get done.
It is a means to an end most times, and not because I like it, but because that is the environment where it works the best.
And really, if I had my druthers, I’d ask somebody to write technology so I could communicate with all of the people who work for me and just send it straight to their computer so they don’t have to remember, they don’t have to lose a piece of paper or whatever.
So why don’t I use analog stuff?
Well, I find digital to be more useful.
I take notes in my Bible when I’m reading.
I write with the Apple Pencil in the Notes app or lots of other varieties of things and meetings at work.
When somebody sends me a PDF with topics that they want to cover in a meeting, I immediately put it into the Freeform app so that I can write notes on it in a markup-type form.
And that’s where I live.
That’s why I do this podcast.
That’s why I enjoy doing this microcast.
And that’s why I enjoy the tools that I use in the technology world because I’m a digital person.
Well, that’s all I have for today.
As always…
Oh, sorry, I did that wrong.
If you have comments, suggestions, or questions, you can send them to technologybytesatmarigfamily.com.
As always, I want to thank you for listening to the Technology Bytes microcast, and I look forward to the next time we are together taking another bite of technology.
