Technology Travels

I am back home from a short tour of the east coast and have begun really delving into planning.  While I certainly do need to figure out where I am going and what I am doing, getting all that figured out is much more complicated.  The easier question is, what sort of technology am I going to have with me?  My parents were shocked to hear that I had no desire to bring a laptop with me on my travels.  My friend Ryan has been trying to sell me on getting a big fancy camera for the past couple of months.  People keep telling me that I will need to have a cell phone wherever I go.  I wonder how much exactly I really need... and what sorts of things would just end up being a burden.

Computer: I have a Toshiba Satellite, which has dutifully served me well for the past year and a half, but would be a pain to have with me on travels abroad.  It's big and it's heavy.  Having it would just place a "rob me" sign on my back.  I will spend enough time in rural areas and backpacking that anything that I can't throw in a big and take with me would be a pain to have.

How does one travel in the digital age?

Yet, I would like to have some way of processing my thoughts.  There are internet cafes everywhere these days in big cities, but in small towns they will likely be few and far between.  Though the Watson Foundation requires relatively little in terms of my actual text output, I would go a bit nuts if I am not working on some sort of concrete output.  I may not write the Great American Novel or a grand treatise about the growth of agriculture, but I will write something.  While writing things by hand is an option, it's slow, and a bit burdensome.  I would eventually need to transcribe anything good I produced.  Digital would be the preference.

So, in enters the idea of getting a PDA.  They're small, stuffable in a pocket or a bag, cheap, and they can store a fair amount of information.  Add on a foldable keyboard and you have an efficient little device for writing and more.  The trouble is finding anything out about the things.  I spent much of yesterday on the internet and going to several computer stores in hopes of getting more information, but no one seems to carry them or know anything about them.  It is plain to see that it is a dying technology.  Smartphones and laptops have encroached enough that they no longer have a solid enough corner on the market for portable multimedia.  Employees at these stores seem to know nothing... I just need to find a user and ask about how they work and such... we will see.

Camera: I have a Canon Elph.  A nice, pocket sized camera from two years back.  It works well enough, but is getting up there in its years (as far as technology goes, sigh).  It is really good for snap shots, but if I would like to take nicer photos, I would be a bit out of luck.  Over the past five years between my two Canon Elphs, I have taken over 15,000 photographs, but for the most part they have been snapshots.  I am limited by my technology and wouldn't mind taking a step into the next level of a nicer piece of equipment.  The trouble is size as much as cost.  The Nikon D40 is a nice camera, but still weighs in at a pound, and more importantly takes a fair bit of space in a bag, and a fair amount of stress in my mind.  While I can slip my current camera into a pocket for taking around with me, a camera with lenses would need to be in a bag all of the time.  I am going to be out and about for fourteen months and I have a lot of trouble thinking about carrying a bag with me every moment for that entire time... but then again, I might likely be doing that anyhow.  With a passport, purified water, guidebooks, maps, and a notebook/palm pilot with me anyhow, how much more is a little ol' camera?

Phone: I waited until just last year to finally get a cell phone in the US.  I had done just fine without one, but I anticipated that with applying to jobs and moving about it would be a good thing to have.  Though I rarely use even a third of my minutes, it has been a good thing to have, overall.  But would I need one in another country?  Talking to people overseas with them would be silly expensive, so I would go to a call center for that anyhow.  It would more likely be for planning things in the country... which could be quite convenient.  And in an emergency?  I guess it would be nice.

Oy.