Deep Fried Man believes he was a tech hipster before tech hipsters were even a thing.

This is my tech column. Every month I write about various forms of technology, things like smartphones and notebooks and computers and gaming consoles. This column is published on TechSmart, a site that focuses on the same forms of technology, as well as other cool tech such as cars, cameras, watches, headphones, GPS units and tablets.

Now, before you start screaming at the top of your lungs, “STOP STATING THE OBVIOUS, DEEP FRIED MAN!!!,” thereby causing everyone in your open plan office to look up from their Excel spreadsheets and stare at you in open-mouthed shock, allow me to get to the point. This publication, as most others like it, only focuses on forms of technology that are fashionable and sexy.

Every day, in tech publications around the world, various forms of technology are marginalised. As I write this, innovations are being made, taking such complex machinery as combine harvesters, tractors, cultipackers and broadcast feeders to the next level. But no, just because the readers of this site aren’t farmers these forms of technology are overlooked in favour of whatever bourgeois gadget is flavour of the month. People are making brave new strides in the development of hydraulic excavators, vibratory compactors and high-pressure mud pumps, but do those of us who aren’t in construction even care? Hell no. And don’t even get me started on the lack of respect shown by tech journalists towards such oft overlooked forms of advanced educational technology as interactive whiteboards, online study tools and computerized adaptive testing.

I have decided that this has to stop. For too long tech publications have focused on mainstream forms of technology. From now on, I will be TechSmart’s resident technology hipster, writing columns about forms of technology that you, the reader, didn’t even know existed. Next month, you can look forward to my column on rotogravures. You’ve probably never even heard of them. I want to be able to say that I wrote about amplitude modulation signalling systems before they were cool. I want to write about how you’re not nearly on the pulse if you don’t know about the latest developments in space lattice passive repeaters. I want to be the envy of all the other tech hipsters, which won’t be easy since I am, so far, the only one that exists. You hear that? I was a tech hipster before being a tech hipster was even a thing.

It won’t be that way for long, though. Soon I will have inspired a whole army of tattooed, bearded tech hipsters in flannel shirts to get together and discuss the merits of the latest thermoacoustic heat engine over craft beer. The best part is that you have me to summarise the latest innovations in obscure technologies right here in TechSmart every month. You have a lot to look forward to.

But sadly, for now, I must leave you. I need to check out the brand new programmable thermostat I just got sent for review.

Photo courtesy of GA Goodman. 
Article first appearead in TechSmart May 2014