On Dec. 17, 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright made the first successful man-powered airplane flight, near Kitty Hawk, N.C.

I wonder if anybody remembers the name of the third man, since it took two people to steady the wings and one flat on his face in the glider.

I've always wondered why some people take to innovation right away (early adopters), many others follow soon after, and some simply will not, under any circumstance, try the new-fangled invention.

My Great-Aunt Gladys was one of those. To her dying day, she shrieked whenever anyone turned on the single electric light in her farmhouse. I can remember many visits there, feeding the animals and canning vegetables, all with oil lamps as the only illumination.

Today I have a similar problem with some employees. Though desk-top computers have been around for years and years, I have two employees who will not touch a PC keyboard, let alone check their email.

And no amount of support, demonstration, training will help. Nor have disciplinary write-ups had any impact. You can call them Luddites, if you will, but I wonder why the aversion to technology. And not only that, but to certain technologies. One of the employees I know for sure has a cell phone and uses it regularly.

It's just like a regular phone without the wire, she says. So I tell her a desktop computer is like a typewriter, only with a viewscreen. That's different, she said. Yeah, well, I knew that, but I was trying to get her past her resistance. Oh, well.

I myself refused to program my VCR. But in my case, it was laziness, not inability or fear.

I wonder what quirk drives the technophobes.