Darren comments on the Moleskine notebook:

Seth undersells the Moleskine notebook. Yes, it's a mark of snobbery and elitism, but what (as The Rebel Sell teaches us) isn't?

His defence of the notebook is genuine and refers us to the inevitable but in this instance quite lovely blog on Moleskines but I can't get past that snobbery and elitism idea. It would strike me that a hobby such as blogging which requires at least $1,000.00 for a desktop and $40 to $50 bucks a month from decent internet should be considered elitist and given that much of the opinion that is set out on many a blog is criticism of others, there is a fair claim to snobbery of one sort or another. Add to this the hierarchy of expensive technology - the right brand of the laptop, the blackberry, the digital camera, the wireless, the iPod(s) and all their brief life-cycles - that you need to be really emotionally involved with all this and the risk of elitery is all around.

Compare this to the simple notebook of which the Moleskine is one of the finest and well loved. And it's is all so affordable. Add a pen or pencils and you have art. The letter to your future self. Bound like a gospel of me. A strongbox collage of early drafts. I am coming to the end of the life of a notebook at work I have added to daily for two years. I have also boxes hidden away with the notebooks of travels half a life ago. I can hardly find the thoughts I set down in this medium three weeks ago.

When did snobbery come to equate with modest, practical and sensible?