"So, you work with technology? I hate technology! Here's my card."

My smartphone according to Jack

On a quick flight up to Atlanta this past weekend I sat next to a man named Jack. Jack is a 50 something year old New Jersey native with matching Joyzee accent and attitude. When I sat down he was polishing off a large bag of Cheetos and brushing the crumbs from his black jeans onto the floor of the plane.

I'm a friendly guy when I fly. I love to meet people, hear their stories, and share my own. It's a laugh.

I asked Jack if he had heard of Prime Music from Amazon. It's my latest obsession and I like to tell people about it. He replied surprisingly angrily that he "will not associate with that website or any other website for that matter"...

"Oh", I replied. "Why is that"?

These were magic words. Jack proceeded to denounce every form of technology he could think of, save for his flip phone (the only phone He'll ever trust), warning me of the evil nature of modern technology and that we are all under a microscope. He did this all while sitting on a 100 million dollar flying chunk of technology. He proudly bragged that he does not own a TV, a DVD player, or the like. This went on for about 5 minutes, until he changed the subject to his new book, which will cover such topics as the evils of technology, his experiences with various drugs when he was younger, etc.; a cautionary tale I assume.

I listened patiently until he ran out of steam, then excused myself into my ear buds, saying "Thanks for sharing all of that, Jack. I'm going to check out now and blast some music into my head" to which he replied "It better be heavy metal".

Some of it is, Jack. Some of it is.

About five minutes passed (which at this point seems to be Jack's mode change interval) before I felt a tap on my arm. Jack was holding a folio of developed film pictures of his trip to a national landmark and wanted to show me the pictures.

After going through the pictures with me, he put them back into their folder, and passed it to the seat behind us for a coworker of his to look through, then Jack asked me what I do.

I told him that I work in IT for a large non-profit, and that I also write as much as possible.

"Really!?" Jack said excitedly, do you have a data center?

Confused by his sudden interest I told him that no, we do not have a data center, but we do have server rooms.

"Wow man, that's great, I cleanse data centers for a living. My company micro filters the air, cleans under the raised floors, cleans server racks, all kinds of stuff".

Really? A guy who hates tech but cleans data centers for a living?

I wrote down the name of Jack's company, and excused myself back into my ear buds for the remainder of the flight. Technology hating data center cleaning Jack had piqued my weirdometer just enough to make me leery.

I wish you all the best, Jack. But you'll never know that since you'll never read this evil technology based writing.