In an a world that is increasingly, if not now completely, governed by the mores of digital discourse—the two sentence “tweet,” the direct-download Kindle, the soundbite of a soundbite, the ubiquity of appendage-like earbuds and blue tooth devices, the mobile phone to Facebook status update, the “bleeding edge” trumping the “cutting edge” —there exists, more than ever, a need to expound upon the simple pleasures of a low-tech existence.

I’ll certainly be the first to admit that I’m really not technologically savvy in the slightest: my cellphone is of a pre-Obama vintage, I don’t have a Twitter account, and I don’t even own an iPod anymore. But I am, however, an avid user of a “device” that I find to be incredibly enriching and useful in my day-to-day life, work, and thought that is so hip it doesn’t have even a backlight or keypad; in fact, it doesn’t even need electricity to run. It’s a Moleskine notebook.

My erstwhile feelings about Moleskine, which I acknowledge have drastically changed, were always more anxiety and distate than practical application. I believe that for many, there is a natural skepticism of material-driven nostalgia, especially in a rapidly self-refreshing society—in the digital realm, there’s just simply not that much room for the “outdated.” Moreover, it’s easy for Moleskine users to practice this nostalgia, falling into the game of Modernist hero-worship encouraged by the company’s packaging (“The Legendary Notebook of Hemingway, Picasso, Chatwin”), a symptom of the potency of the object’s ‘signifier’ status. This signifier status has attracted all sorts of talentless hangers-on, from the Brooklyn hipster self-proclaimed novelist-in-(infinite)-waiting, to the Starbucks poet-poser, to the Hemingway freak who gets off to The Snows of Kilimanjaro but can’t write for shit; all of these characters’ shamelessly cling to the cache of the object itself as a stand-in for their lack of literary perception.

Before my Moleskine enlightment, I was afraid to get my hands dirty—were my thoughts worthy of this “Legendary Notebook,” I would ask myself? Was my handwriting idiosyncratic enough? How varied was my sentence structure? And worst of all, would others mistake me for a Moleskine poser? I soon realized that pondering these frivolous questions in too much depth stood directly against what the notebook, and creative thought itself, stood for: the ability to capture a moment’s feeling organically, constructing it, articulating it, and bending it, all with a tandem of simple tools. Despite all of the productivity and rapid-fire communication offered by new technology and Web 2.0, there is still something eerily true and worthwhile about the notion of creating meaning through writing, this in stark contrast to the digital ethos of finality, code, image, signs. There’s something refreshing about how your own notes scream “work in progress.”

I learned this lesson after a freak accident involving my formerly beloved email-whoring, wifi-pirating iPod Touch, a toilet with industrial-strength flush capabilities, and a package of Lysol wipes; as they say, “the rest was history.” But alas, I was a tragically broke, spottily-employed college student with aspirations to go into a field of further spotty employment (the Written Word); it seemed unlikely that I could devote the necessary resources to purchasing another digital luxury device, especially one that could be so quickly rendered useless by toilet water. Needless to say, I have gone without portable online culture since that fateful afternoon, and as a result, I have been forced to overcome my anxieties of not living up to my “Legendary” notebook. I’ve been jotting notes ravenously ever since.

Despite the Moleskine’s je ne sais quoi, and certainly despite the hipster-poser overuse of its signifier status, it’s a notebook that is just as pragmatic as a legal pad and more thought-friendly than a cold Blackberry keyboard. I’d even argue that for me, in a few short months, the newfound ability to spin, rap, and question my own thoughts in a solid-bound, pocket-sized reporter’s notebook has made me a much more thoughtful person—and without wi-fi in my hand every second of the day, my thoughts have been mine and mine alone. That is, until I feel like publishing them; I’m no longer distracted by the soul-crushing Facebook newsfeed and status update “media cycle” that used to make both my typing-trigger-finger, and my social vanity, itch for updates.

Though I still affirm my membership to our fast paced online-citizen driven society, I’ve come to realize that the joys of the low-tech encourage thought in a way that Web 2.0 participation culture certainly cannot. I’ve realized that you don’t need to click “like” or “4 stars” to assert your presence—all you have to do is quickly jot down your feelings to remind yourself that not only do you still exist in this blurry-lined digital world, but that the sovereignty of your thoughts is a distinction worth reveling in.