What computer do you use? I have a Sony Vaio that's about two years old. I started out on an Amstrad Word Processor, which was very primitive and had an exceedingly green screen but it was still a delight to use. I've still got a clunky old desktop, which I refuse to throw away for sentimental reasons as I wrote my first novel on it.
Is the word processor now mightier than the pen? It has transformed the writing process completely. I think if Tolstoy had owned a word-processor he would have been a briefer, if not better, writer! He probably would have found it much easier to edit and rewrite too _ War & Peace would possibly have ended up about 350 pages long! I also have extremely bad handwriting, which makes the computer even more advantageous.
How has technology altered our cultural landscape? For people like me the information that's now at your fingertips, in terms of research, is vast. It makes research and editing fantastically easy, which in turn makes for better books if you utilise that resource. In that sense I am hugely pro-technology. As regards the reliability of the information on the net... it's reliable enough for me!
Any disaster stories? Oh God yes! My computer is always crashing. I somehow thought that because there are no moving parts in computers they'd be alright! Instead they've given me some of the most depressing experiences of my life. There is nothing more upsetting than when your computer goes wrong, as you can never quite recapture what you've lost if you're writing fiction. Once you have imagined something you can never really 're-imagine' it.
I have always been Windows-based, all the most boring, standard stuff. Because I don't fully understand computers it's my fundamental belief that no one really understands them - and there's an amazing overconfidence about knowing how they work. One can come across 10 different people who are blasé about being able to fix them until you sit them in front of it and they go "Oh_that's really surprising!"
Do you think e-books will capture the imagination? No. I could be wrong but the book, as an object, is always going to be the more attractive option. I hope they don't take off as I still consider e-books a fringe activity. The copyright aspect of the net still concerns me, though it's probably quite good for the punter!
Favourite sites? I don't really surf much at all other than for research. I use Google and Copernic for searching, as they are all you could ever need. I would like search engines to get more precise as they're still quite vague.
