Up the road from Silicon Valley, John Liviakis runs a business that promotes and invests in small companies, many of them high-tech ventures, yet Liviakis himself is unabashedly unwired. He has never been on the Internet. Never sent an e-mail. Never even sat down at a computer.

The 43-year-old entrepreneur isn’t a Luddite; he just figures his time can be better spent elsewhere. That mostly means on the phone, making 120 or more calls a day. His company, Liviakis Financial Communications, grosses an average of $45,000 an hour in fees, he says, and he simply doesn’t have time for surfing the Web or learning about new digital gadgets. "I can’t be on the computer at $45,000 an hour," he says.

Liviakis is a member of a silent but sizable portion of the population who have chosen not to use the Internet. These are not people for whom Web access is a costly luxury—many of them could easily afford computers. But these people think e-mail is impersonal and would rather use the phone or the mail to contact friends, family, and business associates. They prefer rooting around in libraries and bookstores, saying the information they get the old-fashioned way is easier to find and more reliable. They would rather shop in a store, where they can try on clothes or see a gift before they purchase it.

"There is a significant amount of the population who will tell you they don’t have a need" for the Internet, says Craig Spiezle, chief executive of AgeLight, a consulting firm that aims to help older adults get online. Barbara McLean, president and co-founder of Livineasy, says: "People are mistaken when they think everybody is on the Internet." McLean—whose business operates a Web site (www.livineasy.com) targeting "mature" adults uncomfortable with computers and the Internet—says many people are uncomfortable with technology, worry about privacy online, are concerned about credit-card security, or lack time.

Forrester Research says this segment of the population is huge—far greater than the Internet hype of recent years would lead you to believe. Only 43% of U.S. households were online in 1999, the market research firm says. Although that percentage will continue to grow, Forrester analyst Christopher Kelley estimates that 47% of the U.S. population could be called technology pessimists: people who are ambivalent or outright hostile toward technology.

Technology pessimism is certainly more common among the elderly. While 66% of Americans age 18-29 had Internet access, just 13% of the over-65 population was wired, according to a March survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project—a nonprofit initiative of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. Many elderly people also decline to use automated teller machines, and some don’t even have a phone.

But McLean says it’s simplistic to think of pessimism as just a function of age. She says pessimists come in all shapes and sizes, and all ages. Many people simply haven’t yet been given a compelling reason to go online, or find the experience unpleasant when they do.

Mark Hall, a 51-year-old high school science teacher who lives in Alton, Ill., says he simply prefers live talk to e-mail. "I want to hear the emotion in your voice. I don’t want to send a cryptic e-mail," he says. It isn’t that he has never been online. This year, Hall and a friend spent an hour and a half searching online for airline tickets to Utah. But even the friend, who enthusiastically suggested the Internet search, was dissatisfied. "Everything we found had some qualifications on it or small print" that restricted when the tickets could be used, Hall recalls. "All we got from the experience was frustration." Ultimately, Hall booked the tickets at a nearby travel agent.

Hall isn’t even sold on the value of the Internet for research. He decided to go on a five-week excursion this past summer to float down the Green and Colorado rivers, and used his Sierra Club membership to find a white-water-raft company. Hall plotted his itinerary on a road atlas. He gathered information on the region by digging into his 2,000-volume personal library. Hall says he could see using the Internet someday to get information on overseas destinations, but he doesn’t foresee other uses.

There are a lot of people out there who feel the same way about the Internet, Hall says, "but we’re afraid to speak up."

Drew Peterson, likewise, doesn’t think he’d benefit from information on the Web. Not even to check the weather forecast before going for an early-morning swim in the ocean? No, thanks, the San Diego surgeon says. Standing in the sand near his home, the 42-year-old doctor says he’s happy just putting on his wet suit and heading for the surf. "My life is great, and I’ve never been on the Internet," he says.

For medical research, he goes to the hospital’s library and asks the librarian to retrieve material from the Internet on, for instance, whether a common foot ailment might be work-related. That way, he can just stop by on his way home and pick up the material in a manila envelope. "It saves me time," Peterson says, noting he doesn’t have to sit at the computer to get the information himself. "I can head home and be with my family."

Friends and family are incredulous, he says. "You mean you’ve never been on the Internet?" he says one person asked him. The person acted "as if I were a criminal or something." Peterson’s mother even offered to pay for an online service. The doctor declined. Peterson’s wife, Cyndi, a 38-year-old dermatologist, once did sign up for Internet access. But after a month she decided to cancel the online service because it "sapped" her time. "I have enough going on," she says.

Like Hall, the Petersons savor the kind of human interaction that e-mail and the Web don’t offer. Drew recalls how his brother Jeff begged him to get online. Jeff wanted to e-mail him digital photos of his new baby. "Guess what?" Drew told Jeff over the phone. "I’m driving up to Orange County to see the baby." He was among the first family members to meet the newborn.

Donna Rillo, former owner of a Florida title-insurance business, has also resisted her family’s pleas to buy a computer and go online. "I don’t want the clutter," says the 65-year-old, who lives in Lawrenceville, Ga. "I don’t want all this equipment sitting around." Besides, Rillo has plenty to do. She collects art and antiques. She tends to the gardening on her one-acre property, where dozens of crepe myrtle trees grace the grounds, along with pear trees, dogwoods, and azaleas. Rillo designed her 4,000-square-foot French colonial home from the bottom up. Instead of preparing digital photo albums, Rillo makes photomontages for family members. She collects nice stationery and cards to mail to people. "It’s a very full life," she says.

Rillo, the mother of three daughters, is skeptical of information on the Web. "How do you separate the wheat from the chaff?" she asks. Her daughters turn to the Internet for health matters. But Rillo, who suffers from osteoporosis, gets a monthly newsletter from the Mayo Clinic and buys books on health, diet, and exercise. "It turns out I’m just as up-to-date as my daughters," she says. "I’m more comfortable with my sources."

Barbara Ford, 36, the owner of a furniture store in Chicago, has a computer at work for tracking inventory and doing other tasks, but the computer isn’t linked to the Internet. Ford worries a hacker could break into her files. "If they could get into the Pentagon, they could easily get into our system," she says.

Craig Cohen, whose company, Compushine, helps uptown Manhattan residents and businesspeople take their first steps on the Internet, says: "To people who don’t use a computer, it’s a scary thing. You saw HAL," the infamous computer in the Stanley Kubrick film 2001: A Space Odyssey that turns on the astronauts and tries to take over control of the spacecraft.

But as Cohen’s business model attests, some who for now consider cyberspace uncharted territory may be there in the future. "Although technology pessimists aren’t the group of consumers that retailers dream about at night, their growth is too impressive to ignore," Kelley of Forrester Research says. In 1999, he says, the number of technology pessimists who bought online surged some 160%, to 4.2 million households from 1.6 million. That dwarfed the 100% expansion for e-commerce generally in 1999, a record growth year.

How to attract these customers? Kelley says online retailers must make their sites "very easy to use" and provide customer-service representatives who can be reached by phone—not just by computer. Cheaper computers also could bring more people online, experts say. So could consumer-electronics devices designed to get on the Internet and do some of the things PCs do, but in a more user-friendly way.

Some companies are starting to target the pessimists. In August, 3Com, a maker of networking hardware, launched a $100 million ad campaign poking fun at the complexities of technology. In one ad, family members fight over who gets to use the home’s one shared phone/Internet line. Another shows two tech wizards at the office wedged together under a desk, their rear ends protruding while figuring out the computer and phone wiring. "Simple sets you free," the ad proclaims.

Liviakis, the entrepreneur who spends his days on the phone, doesn’t disagree but still intends to pay someone else to do the computer work for him. He admits that he might fall behind as more and more people get comfortable with the Internet and digital technology, but he isn’t planning to take any time out soon to learn how to use a computer. Maybe when he retires, in a decade or two.

SOUL OF AN OLD MACHINE

Award-winning author David McCullough adores his manual typewriter. "It’s part of me. And I’m part of it. It’s almost like an extension of my own hand," the 67-year-old historian says. "Sometimes I’ve had the thought that maybe it’s writing the books."

In 1965, McCullough—author of six widely acclaimed books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Truman—bought a secondhand, upright Royal, vintage 1940. He has written all his books on it. Sure, people tell him: "You could go so much faster with a computer." But, he asks, why? "I enjoy my work. I have no desire to make it go faster," he insists. "Furthermore, I can’t think any faster than I can work those typewriter keys."

Working on the Royal is a thrill. "I love the feeling of working on it with my hands—of making something with my hands. I love to push the carriage lever so it goes over and the bell rings like an old trolley," he explains. McCullough loves to put the paper in and take it out. He likes changing ribbons. "It’s something tangible," he says. "It’s not off in the ether somewhere."

There are practical benefits, too. McCullough lives on Martha’s Vineyard, where power failures frequently plunge the island’s residents into darkness. "I can keep on working. In fact, we’ve had some hurricanes where all the power was out for hours on end. And I kept right at it," he says. "Blizzards. Hurricanes. Nothing stops the click of the typewriter."

McCullough has nothing against the computer. But, like many other successful older people, he hasn’t found time to learn how to use one. He does have an assistant who retypes his manuscripts on a word processor and performs Internet searches.

Even without the Royal, though, he wouldn’t turn to a computer. "If somebody were to come and take it away from me, or they stopped making the ribbons, or something, I would write with a pen," he says. "I just work my thoughts out on paper. Not on a screen. I think that’s the difference."

Fillion is a free-lance writer based in Evergreen, Colo. He can be reached at rfillion@mindspring.com.