As a technology journalist – or at least, a certain type of technology journalist – you subconsciously internalise a lesson: never be excited about anything. Because as soon as you are, people will rush to tell you two things: the first is that the thing you’re excited about is to a given extent stupid and pointless (and so by extension are you, both for being excited about it and just in general), and the second is that you are an unthinking shill for the company which makes it, hell-bent on brainwashing the public with your hagiographies – and so completely corrupt and untrustworthy.
I’ve gotten pretty good at dealing with (read: ignoring) both over the years, but I’m still not strong or arrogant enough for them not to bother me at some level.
However, I’m hugely excited about buying an Apple Watch, and anyone who would seek to make me feel small about that can fuck off. I am quite aware of the criticisms of smartwatches in general and the Apple Watch in particular, and I acknowledge at least the possibility that it will prove to be an expensive bauble, an ultimately doomed gewgaw, even though it seems unlikely.
But I’m excited to find out for myself. I’m a technology enthusiast – a discerning one, not a blind one, I think. I’m looking forward to finding out what the Watch does, how it changes me and those around me; having a front-row seat for the show sounds like fun.
On Friday, when I preorder my Apple Watch, I will be excited. I can understand why the public would find that an unseemly emotion in a journalist, but it doesn’t have to come at the expense of objectivity, and personally I would far rather read something suffused with enthusiasm and delight than something so constricted by dispassion and neutrality that all the life has been squeezed out of it.