I'm mature?

I'm a changed person these days. I used to be a rabid consumer of anything new in technology, especially anything related to the Mac. I would get my copies of MacZone, MacWarehouse, ClubMac, and others once a month and pour over every single page. I loved making a list of things for my dream machine - the rumored "Power Express" that was going to be the next great model of Macintosh (in my eyes anyway) - and figuring out all the great software that I couldn't afford to put on it. Strata Studio Pro 8? Never mind that I knew nothing about 3D modeling programs - I _needed_ it. Today I get fewer catalogs in the mail (along the same lines as my magazine rant), but it's something more than just seeing out of date information - I'm reacting to that information differently as well. Mainly, I just don't care about as much of the content as I did before. Part of it is the fact that I no longer spend time thinking about building a dream machine - I have computers, and even though I can't use them to play Halo, I'll probably keep them for a while. I also find myself focusing more on things I actually use, since the volume of information out there makes it difficult to be an expert on everything.

I see the same thing happening to my online viewing habits. Macsurfer has long been my main source for getting tech (mac) news. It still is, but now I spend at least as much time going through blogs and forums every day. I guess I'm tired of seeing the exact same information presented the same way over and over - when Apple announces something it gets repeated on the main sites within the day and smaller publications within a couple of weeks. It's tedious to sift through all of them, especially since they usually contain the same boilerplate marketing information from the original press release.

I see myself spending more time reading people's opinions about a headline in their blogs. It feels like I'm getting more "value added", thought-provoking information. I also enjoy seeing (and occasionally interacting with) the community of users that surround various blogs and topics. The same sort of thing has gotten me interested in forums recently - a focused group of users that care about a specific program or topic.

This all makes me wonder if it's just me changing, or if we're in a different stage of computer technology... for instance - do kids still get as excited about the new stuff as I did back in the day? Even if they aren't, this change makes me feel like more of an old man... hrm.