Thinking about Book!Aziraphale’s relationship with modernity and technology, because it is more complex and nuanced than just ‘Old-At-Heart Immortal can’t catch up with the times’. The sense I get is that, unlike Book!Crowley, who takes great care to be always as up-to-date as possible with all the latest trends and tech, because that’s ’the kind of human he’s trying to be’ and also generally useful to his ‘modernized sin spreading’ shtick, Aziraphale is just… very selective about what he’s paying attention to. He doesn’t care that much about modern music or slang/other linguistic changes or fashion trends, so they tend to slip by him…
But if it’s something that is Relevant to His Interests, he has no problems adapting to it fairly quickly. Compact Discs were modern technology when Book Omens takes place, and they made it near the top of Crowley’s list of things Aziraphale will miss after Armageddon. Because Aziraphale likes music, so he whole-heartedly adopted this new convenient human tech for storing and owning music.
Book!Aziraphale was ‘the first Angel to own a computer’! It’s clearly not as modern and up-to-date as the one in Crowley’s flat that he upgrades every few months, but still, in 1990/the late 80’s, Aziraphale was still kinda ahead of the curve on the widespread adoption of computers!
Because it helps him do his taxes and manage his “”business””. He probably has no interest in upgrading it or keeping up with evolving computer technology… unless Humans invent some improvement that’s also Relevant to His Interests. And Aziraphale almost definitely actually uses his computer on a regular way more than Crowley, who, at least in 1990, was only buying computers as a status symbol.
(That being said, seeing as Crowley had become addicted to Googling Himself by the 2005 New Year Resolutions, he probably figured out things he likes to do on the computer eventually.)
And at the same time, yeah, he has does have little experience with answering machines…
Probably not technology he would really care about. If anyone calls him while he’s not home or not available , they could just kinda… fuck off, probably. Although I won’t say he’s totally unfamiliar with what they are, pretty quickly after the ‘stop making noises!’ bit he realizes that he should try Crowley’s other number. That’s why I think he just doesn’t have a lot of experience with them and forgot due to the stress he was under at the time.
But all of this makes me wonder… what level of modern technology has Book!Aziraphale adopted by now? By the 2020’s?
janainaart
jacobvanloon
germansingergirl
origamiaround
dailybridgerton
