Such feelings are, of course, largely misplaced: tech, whether high or low, will not save your arts company from bankruptcy or propel it to a BAFTA, if such things motivate you. Twitter, immersive 3-D, motion capture suits...all merely tools, like a shoelace or a crab pick. But that's an increasingly heretical view these days in the arts. While no one is likely to brand you as obsolete if your kitchen lacks a crab pick, if you're out of step with the latest tech there are some who think you might as well float skyward and explode in a shower of light, a la the grim 30th birthday ceremony in Logan's Run. I'm only half-joking here. At Shift Happens, one breathlessly overconfident speaker asked, in a very shouty way, who amongst the crowd did NOT have Twitter or Facebook at the centre of their life. After a moment, a brave woman limply raised her hand. The speaker was gape-jawed; in the crowd, a silence reigned like that of deep space. If there was an App for virtual tarring and feathering, I would have feared for the brave woman's virtual life.

For all I know, this Twitterless wonder is a shit-hot artist (I never found out: a dozen men in bright white hazmat suits immediately rappelled from the rafters and bundled her away, reportedly for radical reprogramming). But isn't it enough to be a shit-hot artist these days, tech or no? I ask not out of Luddishness, having worked for years in the Silicon Valley in jobs that brought me into daily contact with the bleeding edge of purportedly world-changing technology. I have my Twitter and Facebook, my AudioBoo and Beejive. And of course, I have my blog(s).

But there's an increasingly noisy little voice in my head urging me to turn off (my iPhone and laptop), tune out (of Twitter, Facebook, Skype, Wordpress, Posterous, etc) and drop away from a race I'm not likely to win, nor ever find myself interested enough in to try. The race, I think, is for me to become sufficiently one with my technology so that it guides my personal, professional and creative life, every bit as much as I guide it. To win the race, one has to surrender to the race itself.

Here's an idea. Maybe it's time for an antidote to events like Shift Happens and its inspiration, the much-moneyed and ultra-hip TED. Maybe a conference not with high tech or even low tech, but with NO tech! Just minds, hands and voices...y'know, old school, keeping it r-e-a-l. Hmm, this might have legs. A quick round on my Twitter feed, and it should develop nicely.