PRESIDENT'S LOG:I love my iPhone. I have two Kindle e-book readers, a few iPods and I shall be the first in the queue when they start selling the iPad, writes FERDINAND VON PRONDZYNSKI

I WAS four years old when I had my first encounter with an electric typewriter. This wonderful piece of equipment – an Adler I think – was sitting in my father’s office, and I asked whether I could have a go. Someone put in a blank piece of paper, and I sat down and practised being an academic with a publisher’s deadline. I typed as if my life depended on it.

Actually, I hadn’t started school yet and could not read or write; but I certainly could type, probably about 30 words a minute. Not real words, or at least not deliberately; though I remember my mother and sister poring over the output to see if I had accidentally written something, like the monkeys who, according to probability theory, if given a typewriter and allowed to type infinitely would one day (accidentally) write Hamlet.

It is fitting that the typewriter encounter is one of my earliest memories, because I have been in love with gadgets ever since. I like to think that gadgets open the mind, and based on this I have acquired every one that is released which I can afford.

But I am not alone, and certainly not alone in higher education. Recently a student came to my office with a request. As he sat down he opened his briefcase and took out a small laptop, placed it on the table and booted it up. And as he asked his question and listened to my answer, he was typing away energetically on the keyboard.

I don’t know what he was writing: maybe he was taking down what I was saying; maybe he was composing his latest entry on Twitter; maybe he was playing Sudoku – who knows? I was intrigued, but said nothing. When he was finished he packed up his laptop and left. I am told by colleagues that the laptop is a common sight in the lecture theatre or classroom.

Distracting though that may be, it will be less so than the Olympia typewriter that a student once brought to a seminar early on in my lecturing career, which moreover he was not excessively skilled at using: the keys regularly got stuck as he typed, and as he released them he was fond of muttering an expletive or two, which were repeated sotto voce by some of the other students.

Anyway, I tend to think there is something cerebral about typewriters and laptops – they are knowledge transfer gadgets.

Is that true of mobile phones? The mobile is the one gadget I have somehow not come to love. I was an early adopter – at the time in the 1980s when you needed to use both hands to lift one. I still have the first one I bought (a Motorola) and, while it has long stopped being a communication device, I think it still might have its uses if I ever need to throw something through a window to smash it and don’t have a brick to hand. I was an early adopter, but never an admirer. There’s something about them that destroys privacy, or even dignity.

I was once on a train in Britain, and sitting opposite me in the carriage was a young man (a salesman) and an elderly lady. The young man was constantly on his phone, but his calls were solely about where the train was or what he wanted for dinner. And he was loud! Then, when the phone rang once again, the elderly lady quickly grabbed it from him and put it in her handbag, telling him he could have it back when either she or he left the train. The young man was about to protest when others sitting nearby began to clap. So he thought better of it.

But even if I am not a fan of mobiles, I love my iPhone. I have two Kindle e-book readers. I have various Apple Macintosh computers and laptops. I have a few iPods. And I shall be the first in the queue when they start selling the Apple iPad.

Yes, I am a supporter of technology. And while there may be some element of toys-for-the-boys in this, I also think that these gadgets are significant not just as icons of the age but also as the tools for distributing knowledge and culture. When people start buying the iPad, a good few will be using it to read Charles Dickens, just as iPod owners are often listening to Beethoven or Bruckner.

So if I were to see students coming into lectures with iPads, I wouldn't panic. Of course some may be using it for wholly extraneous purposes; but then again my fellow student back in the 1970s who, every Friday, had Sporting Lifeopen under the desk so he could study the form ahead of placing his next racing bets was not less distracting than the student managing their Facebook profile would be now. It is unreasonable to seek to turn back the technological clock, it makes much more sense to engage the student and their hardware.

Anyway, I shall be bringing my iPad along to meetings.

•  Ferdinand von Prondzynski is president of Dublin City University