Un-tech Your Tech: Sometimes You Just Need Real Things
Feature image via Shutterstock
Welcome to the thirty-second installment of Queer Your Tech with Fun, Autostraddle’s nerdy new tech column. Not everything we cover will be queer per se, but it will be about customizing this awesome technology you’ve got. Having it our way, expressing our appy selves just like we do with our identities. Here we can talk about anything from app recommendations to choosing a wireless printer to web sites you have to favorite to any other fun shit we can do with technology.
Header by Rory Midhani
This week, I was going to cover the WWDC announcements. Apple unveiled a sweet iOS 7 with a complete redesign that I think looks really sharp. The new OS X Mavericks has multi-display full screen support and will run 1.5 times faster than Mountain Lion, which is wicked cool. There’s even a new Mac Pro, which I think looks kind of like a trash can, but hey, Apple, you do you.
But frankly, enough people are talking about it. You can see a round up on Gizmodo. Or take a look at the Keynote. Or read about developers getting “sherlocked” (when Apple takes their app’s functionality and makes it part of the operating system.)
I had a death in the family this week. And so I actually don’t want to tell you to go read any of those things, because life is too short to spend every day in front of a computer. Yes, the internet is wonderful. Computers have democratized art making, have brought us together with communities around the globe, have granted us access to information and education that would have been super inaccessible in ages past. Technology is amazingly special, and is certainly not evil. After all, you’re talking to someone who absolutely wants Google Glass in their life. But technology is great in-so-far as it brings our faces together, our work to life. If you’re spending a Saturday, as sometimes I do, caught in the Facebook-Twitter-Tumblr spiral instead of harnessing your tech to make your dreams into reality, I might recommend doing otherwise. Just for today. Just for a few hours. Today, go untech your tech. We’ll be here when we all get back. We promise.
Here are some things that are better in real life that you could try. Your regularly scheduled Queer Your Tech will be back next week, with an extra scoop of nerdiness to make up for the sap I’m throwing at you this week. Enjoy your Saturday.
Listen to Someone Read You a Story
Send Someone a Real Letter As They Did in 1876
Kiss a Girl (With Enthusiastic Consent) Or Maybe Spoon