How do New York Times journalists use technology in their jobs and in their personal lives? Pamela Paul, editor of The New York Times Book Review, discussed the tech she’s using.

About two years ago, you wrote an article about how you downgraded all your tech. How did you downgrade? What do you love about having done that?

It’s easier than you might think because you can pretty effectively downgrade merely by neglecting to upgrade. You just naturally find yourself sliding backward. In my case, this shift has been deliberate, but more about making a mental adjustment than about deactivating existing technology. (Though I did permanently jettison the electric toothbrush.)

There’s a prevailing assumption that just because there’s a new high-tech version of something previously handled in a low-tech way, one should adopt that technology. I come at it from a different angle, which is to start with the need or problem and ask myself: Will this new technology substantively help? And if the upside is speed or information, my next question is: What’s the trade-off? What do I lose along with this gain, and on balance, do the gains outweigh the losses? (Possibly the only thing I learned from Econ 111.)