I can't think of the word 'gadget' without thinking of my grandmother, Gee. In my mind's-ear, Gee has always used the word gadget quite liberally and with enthusiasm, and it may designate anything from a computer mouse to a TV remote control to a microwave rice-cooker.

A secondary gadget association is maybe the time when my cousin Maurice sagely accused my stepfather of going into 'Go-Go-Gadget!' mode when aforementioned stepfather attempted to break up a playground fight in an overly-dramatic fashion.

But this entry is not about either of those thoughts on gadgets. This is about gadgets and travel.

In particular, I am interested in the high-technology end of the travel and gadgets spectrum.

Don't get me wrong - I love my Korjo water boiler (yes, I have an addiction to hot beverages ...), my two (count 'em!) pegless travel clotheslines, my tiny travel cutlery and my mini Maglite torch. But these things don't seem as radically altering to the act of travel as does, say, the advent of email.

At the risk of sounding like some salty old bore, 'I remember way back when we didn't have email, and travelling meant really being away from home.'

Even though my reminiscences cannot compare with people who remember when it was the poste-restante option or nothing, I must say that in 1998 when I took my first adult trip overseas, there was no real thought of emailing home. Most people I knew didn't have an email address, let alone a clue about checking for mail. When I did decide to email Andrew, finding an internet cafe in Florence was an incredible feat, and the hourly rate cost as much as a discount international phonecall today (it was about $8.50 AUD/hr).

Now, in 2005, I find myself on very friendly terms with the proprietor of my favourite internet spot in Banglamphu. She knows me by sight, and we share a few words every day. When I bring in my USB memory device loaded up with photos or text from our laptop, I know which computers in here have a driver to support it, and which don't. All day long, travellers and Thais wander in and out, checking email, surfing the net, burning CDs of their digital photos, and making international calls online.

When we finally decided about a week ago that we needed to move out of our favourite $6 AUD a night bare-basics backpacker haunt, it wasn't because the beds were uncomfortable or the toilets were whiffy. It was because there wasn't a powerpoint in the room, and we had too many things that needed charging. It simply wasn't possible to leave a laptop out in the corridor to charge overnight - and in any case, the communal powerpoint out there was permanently clogged with other backpackers' mobile phones ...

Everything, it seems, has changed.

I have been turning these thoughts over for a while now. After all, if part of travel is being away from home, then has the act of travelling changed irrovocably now that we have so many gadgets connecting us with our origins?

But part of me resisted thinking that it was all so dire. After all, I like reading my email, and I like that being physically absent doesn't also mean being completely incommunicado.

When the tsunami hit, email was the means that I used to communicate with people at home (and other friends who are travelling).

And then it all coalesced yesterday, when I read a piece in the online (!) edition of the Sydney Morning Herald. Entitled 'Gadgets be gone, it's time to turn off', it was essentially a rant about how gadgets are filling our lives with a kind of anti-communication, lulling us into a state where we think we are connecting with others, but really we're just isolated and alone.

Something about the sanctimonious tone of the article stuck in my craw. Is email really responsible for the decline of civilisation? Is the advent of the web really just papering over the dreadful inauthenticity of our society?

I don't think so. I think it's just another choice we have. We can phone or email, we can read the paper online, or in hardcopy.

Unsurprisingly, at the root of all this fear-mongering was marketing for a new product - namely, a universal remote control that the enraged luddite can carry with her and use to switch off TVs that are playing in public places. I can think of few more useless things, really.

I think I would have been a lot less perturbed if the self-described geek in question was concerning himself with how to get more people access to computer skills rather than spending his time creating the ultimate Anti-Gadget-Gadget.

And now that my grandma uses our old computer to check her own email and occasionally to read this blog, I imagine that the internet has become a 'gadget' that she's rather fond of, too.