I first noticed something was off when I went to pay my rent one month. The window for a timely online transfer of funds was closing, so to get the money to my landlord in time, I'd have to do something unusual. I took out my checkbook, grabbed a pen and started writing the date.
It felt weird. My hand cramped a little, churning out numbers and letters with the slightest - but still noticeable - discomfort. My handwriting sucked. It suddenly occurred to me that I hadn't actually written anything by hand in a long, long time. Just a few years earlier, I kept a paper journal by my bed and would buy three-packs of Moleskin notebooks for brainstorming, sketching and jotting things down. What happened?
Over the course of the last four or five years, myriads of little computers found their way into my life. Bit by bit, my professional and creative existence made the transition to an entirely digital universe. At my old job managing digital publishing for a newspaper, the iPad soon replaced my spiral notebook in meetings. Then I left the print world to work on the Internet full-time. I could even sign my freelance contracts with my finger on an iPad.
