We live in a two-tier world. You are either, at heart, an analog person or a digital person. You warm to the familiar or you yearn for the untested. You are a creature of habit or you are cutting-edge.

To find out which, read the following passage, and then listen to your heart. If it shows signs of sinking to your boots, accompanied by an overwhelming sense of dread, then you are definitely in the A category. If, thrilled by the prospect of challenges ahead, it begins to race, then you are in tune with the modern age, a D-listed techno-enthusiast, for whom the world offers a constant pattern of change, switchover and upgrading. The passage runs:

“From next November, the switchover to digital television begins in your area. Over the coming weeks you will received information about tuning in to the new digital age. You will need a Freeview aerial, satellite, cable or broadband. Once the new digital service is in place, analog TV signals will be switched off.”

It ends with the chilling prediction: “Some people will find the process easier than others, and there will be special help for those who need it most.”

I draw no comfort from that — indeed there is an awful inevitability about which category I will end up in. I am, I know, an analogue person. I am not proud of it. The very word sounds dated. Ana-log — Greek for “same as the word”, someone who clings to the written alphabet and the printed form rather than to on-screen technology. It belongs to the same vintage as half-forgotten terms like Bakelite or Formica, Cremola Foam, Spangles, crêpe soles and fly-buttons. It is the kind of thing that sounds as if it is due to be phased out almost as soon as it has been invented.

It is not just the switching off, however, that induces panic, terminal though that sounds. It is the knowledge of what lies ahead — the dense instructions, the bewildering plethora of technical terms, the unidentified accessories, the wires that trail misleadingly to the wrong fittings, the complete inability of the brain to measure itself against a language that is foreign and vaguely threatening.

What follows is just as inevitable. I have endured more than my share of withering contempt from children whose lack of sympathy is only matched by the pleasure they derive from their superior knowledge, so that I no longer seek their help. Instead, I brave the help numbers of an information centre that will finally connect me to a patient voice from Delhi, which concludes that I have received the wrong equipment for the wrong service.

Digital man, by contrast, warms to the offer of anything that comes with additional features or multiple options. He was the first to be equipped with an iPhone, he flicks through the draw-down panels as to the manner born, he is unworried by USB ports or megapixels, he relishes multitouch displays and audio formats. Accessing areas of his computer that the rest of us never knew we had, let alone dared to explore, is as natural to him as tuning in to long wave. Is it an acquired characteristic, this digital gift, or is it genetic? All I know is that I have never been gifted with it, and now, probably, never will be.

There is, however, one compensating factor, and it is something that we analogues are reassuringly immune to — it is the stress of the new. The more your life is bound up with new products and the thrilling opportunities they offer, the more you are plagued with the need to stay ahead of the game. It is not enough to have an iMac, an iPod, an iBook, or an iPhone, you will need what is now known in the trade as “an i-life”.

That, as I understand it, is a ceaseless requirement to upgrade to something new, and it can eat away at your confidence if you cannot feed the habit. The worst thing that can happen to an i-lifer is to discover that a new microprocessor has been launched without his knowledge, offering his rivals a dizzying array of features that he has not yet acquired.

Reading the descriptions of a state-of-the-art mobile phone system currently being marketed by Apple, I realised that this need for new products has become as important as the purchase of a house or even, dare I say it, acquiring a new wife. “This [system] instantly multiplies your desktop real estate,” says a satisfied customer, clearly indicating that it is more than just a useful form of communication, it is a status symbol, as indispensable as a patio or a garage forecourt. “The touchscreen device redefined how humans interact with their phones, as well as offering every feature no self-respecting mobile should be without,” wrote another. This is the language of the obsessional. A phone, surely, is a means of communicating with other people, not a device with which to establish a relationship.

Embracing technology to this extent must, in the end, be inimical to health and sanity, for when it crashes, as sooner or later all technology does, it will cause not only irritation, it will threaten your entire way of life. I prefer to remain with the tried and tested for as long as possible. It may deprive me of my multiple options, but it offers the one option that I need, which is to use something that I understand for a purpose that can be explained to me.

So long as there is an analog life, I intend to stick with it. Only when it is finally switched off will I, reluctantly, turn to the special help for those who need it most.

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