It all started when a bowl of Cheerios fried my old MacBook Pro keyboard.  Knowing I was due for a new machine I picked up a wireless keyboard to get me through to the new MacBook Pro release.  Then I got an iPad 2.  Now I consume information a little differently and I’m hooked on travelling light.

To complicate matters the new MacBook Pro is here.

The whole thing has me thinking about what I need.  This in turn has me thinking about what I do.  And all of this has made me realize that I do is quite different from what I wish I did.  For example, my last 3 MacBook Pros have been purchased with the idea of mastering Photoshop, Final Cut, and a number of other professional-grade programs that ultimately collected dust.

Technology has a way of helping me create fantasies.  And it seems I’m in good company.  Sociologist David Riesman wrote: “The more advanced the technology, on the whole, the more possible it is for a considerable number of human beings to imagine being somebody else.”  Kevin Kelly suggests, “We expand technology to find out who we are and who we can be.”

But here’s the reality of what I do: I consume information and put ideas on paper.  That’s pretty much it.  Part of me feels that I should be doing something more dramatic.  Sure I use Keynote.  But my visuals have become progressively more basic.  In fact I prefer the raw human focus that comes while speaking without slides.

(Listening to myself I wonder if I even need a computer.)

In the end I suspect that I’ll side with the simplicity of the MacBook Air.  My decision will be based more upon what it can’t do rather than what it can.  A simpler machine with limitations might create the boundaries I need to focus on what I do best.