(MONEY Magazine) – I wouldn't call myself a Luddite, exactly. I have a CD player, a TV and a microwave oven, just like any other self-respecting American. But I draw the line at things like Palm Pilots and Blackberries. When my friends tell me how great these things are, I sniff that they're merely toys. But to be honest, I'm a little intimidated. I'm not quite clear what they do. Or how they do it. And I don't like having appliances that are smarter than me. That said, I'm writing this very essay on a Power Mac, a machine about which I know basically nothing but on which I rely completely. I press a button; it lights up; I start typing. How it turns my keystrokes into letters or connects me to the Internet or does anything else is beyond me. "Any smoothly functioning technology," Arthur C. Clarke once said, "will have the appearance of witchcraft." For all I know, there's actually an elf behind my monitor who keeps the thing working if I don't get him angry. And yet, despite this vague terror, I've come to feel reasonably comfortable with the situation.

What I'm less comfortable with is investing in all these things I barely understand. Take JDS Uniphase or Ariba. Growing companies, hot stocks, Wall Street loves 'em--but what do they make? If asked at a cocktail party, I'd smile confidently and say, "Optical switching and B-to-B software, respectively." In plain English that means, uh, well, something to do with the Internet. I think.

Seems to me investors are all too willing to bet on a thing of mystery--a phenomenon many dotcoms, for instance, got hip to pretty early, touting their businesses as high-tech marvels when they were actually little more than lemonade stands in cyberspace.

But hey, what do I know? I recently interviewed that avatar of buy what you know, Peter Lynch. I asked the man who made so much money with companies like Dunkin' Donuts (mmm, donuts; that I understand) if he thought tech companies are too complex for the average retail investor to value intelligently.

The great man made a face. He had only the sketchiest idea what EMC, for example, the data-storage company, actually made--but whatever it is is selling pretty well. "You don't need to know what's in the box," he said.

Maybe they just get their magic elves for less than the competition.

--PETER CARBONARA