So, you think you’re not a tech fogey?

It’s my guess that most people on hacker news would consider themselves to be among the computer elite. As one of the cofounders of a successful web startup, I thought that too. However, I recently realized that despite spending almost every day building new tech, I had become a fogey. And here’s my assertion: if you are over the age of, say 20, it’s very likely that you are too. Let me explain.

If you grew up in the nineties and could describe yourself as a “computer nerd” it’s likely that you learned to program, game, or design on desktop computers. And if you were a gamer in particular (as I was), desktops were the only way to play that next gen graphics-card-bending EA mega release. Even today, desktop computers are still the most cost-effective option for high performance computing and graphics needs.

The problem is that many of us performance junkies have rather blindly become used to hardware that is becoming a niche. By the end of high school, desktops were turning into laptops. By the middle of college laptops had started sharing functionality with smartphones. Now laptops are becoming netbooks, and netbooks are becoming tablets. Six months ago I owned a desktop computer. This was about when I realized how antiquated I had become. I relied on dead pulp to read, I couldn’t text message (seriously), and I couldn’t work outside of my office. I’m working on it of course. I now own a laptop, kindle, netbook, and HTC Incredible with Android 2.2 and I’m learning to be a polite texter. I still don’t know how to send a picture to my girlfriend though, so there’s definitely room for growth.

But the trend is by no means limited to hardware. There’s a whole host of online media that even an internet addict like me chose to ignore. I remember when Facebook first started getting big and my only thought was “that’s irrelevant.” I’ve never really learned to poke, or throw sheep, or play games on Facebook. Instead I score curmudgeon points by grumpily interjecting phrases like “Facebook is a ghetto,” and “I don’t use Facebook, thanks,” into conversions when the topic comes up.

The takeaway here is that you become a fogey by not trying new ways of doing things, even if you deem them “irrelevant” or “a waste of time.” To be clear on this point, you don’t have to be using all the new technologies to avoid being a fogey, you simply have to understand them. As an example, you are a fogey if you can’t Facebook message your kid cousin. You aren’t a fogey is you know how, but suggest you meet up in person instead. Choosing older tech doesn’t make you a fogey, rationalizing your low tech lifestyle with phrases like “learning that is a waste of time” does.

This trend isn’t new, but its speed is. What has shocked me is that I rather expected to avoid asking questions like “how do you twitter on email?” until my mid-thirties. It turns out that I’m already sporting a white beard to my 18 year old cousin and it’s not like I don’t spend ten hours on the internet every day (guilty as charged).

Therefore, I’m a fogey, and I didn’t even know it until recently. However, this implies that many people who are barely older than 20 are fogeys as well.

I always believe that examples prove the point, so I’ll put it this way: if you haven’t learned how to use some of these technologies (regardless of why you haven’t learned them), you might well be a fogey:

General audience:

Social Networks (Facebook, hi5, Orkut)
Strong passwords (strong, unique, rememberable)
Online financial management (Mint)
Mobile cloud storage (Dropbox)
Public pictures (Flickr, Picasa, Dailybooth)
Music in the cloud (Pandora, Spotify)
Individualized shopping (Etsy, Woot)
Group shopping (Groupon, Living Social)
Blogging (WordPress, Blogger, Posterous, Tumblr)
Microblogging (Twitter, Buzz)
Video sharing (Justin.tv, Ustream)
Crowdsourced search (Quora, ChaCha)
Film and TV (TiVo, Netflix)

For HNers and developers:

Automated code testing (unit testing)
Distributed version control (git, Mercurial)
Bugtracking (Fogbugz, Atlassian)
Powerful editor
UX Testing (UXbooth, Steve Krug)
Automated deployment

And these are just the ones that I can grok, there are many more in each category that aren’t listed here.

So how do you score? Remember that you don’t have to use each of the listed services to count it, one in each category will do. Further, you don’t even have to be actively using it the service. If you have a Mint account you don’t use, for instance, count yourself hip to online financial management.

Of 12 general audience technologies, I only score 4/12, so I’m 66% fogey. How about you?