Technology... Evolution...Reflections

Sometimes I wonder what we did before we had the internet.

I know there was a time when it didn’t exist because I actually remember that time. Sadly, I can remember computers when the movie, “War Games,” almost seemed like science fiction. I mean, that movie has Matthew Broderick hooking up a phone to get his computer to talk to another. Nowadays, people would laugh at it and say, “wow- that’s the olden days!”. (Confession: I watched that movie last year and actually did laugh at it and say “that’s the olden days!”)

However, back in 1980-whatever when that film came out, it was amazing to consider that a computer could talk to another one. I’m revealing my age here but I remember when the first home computers started coming out. We used to load games with a tape recorder on a cassette tape. If you bumped the tape recorder, the game would crash and you’d start over. It would take up to a couple of hours to load a game. Anything under an hour was amazing.

I feel like my generation has actually watched this evolution of technology from the very beginning. Certainly, there were computers way before my family owned their first Sinclair Spectrum (that ended up being defective so we swapped it for a Commodore 64). However, the Commodore 64 was one of the first mainstream machines to actually be small enough and usable enough that it could sit in the living room and be used for games and other purposes.

After that, things started moving fast. Cassette recorders gave way to rather large floppy disks that you could cut in half with a pair of scissors and loaded WAY faster than cassette recorders. Then the floppy disks started shrinking and, finally, after several different versions are now becoming obsolete in favour of flash drives and portable hard drives.

It’s interesting to be from this generation because we know what life was like before the internet and we know what life is with it. It was only when I was in college that we were really able to get online. It was before the world wide web even really got going that I got my first email address and all we could do were find usenet groups and use Unix to do stuff online. Then within a year, there was Webcrawler and Lycos and, well, that’s pretty much where the internet became a part of life.

Yet before those days, we used to have to physically go to stores to buy stuff. We used to have to go to the library to look something up. We used to have to discuss TV shows, books and movies in person or over the phone. We had less self-diagnosed ailments because it was way harder to self-diagnose without Web-MD and way more work. If someone had termites in their house, they’d have to wait until the next business day to call someone to take care of them. They couldn’t make an appointment online five minutes after the termites were discovered.

You probably get my point: Life moved slower. At the risk of sounding like an old cranky grandmother, back in the olden days, we had to do more for ourselves and we had to have more social interaction.

It’s a toss-up as to which was better. I’m a self-confessed internet junkie. It supports to my need for instant gratification of information. If I’m trying to figure out what that weird metal thing is that flew up out of my old lawnmower when it exploded, I can go online and do a quick Google to discover it was a piston. If I decide I’m craving cauliflower cheese for dinner, I can go online and find a good recipe and figure out if I need to go to Kroger before I go home.

The internet does make it easier to avoid talking to people. In my job, we can approach candidates via phone or email. I tend to choose email. My coworker prefers the phone. He’s older than me. This is not an insult, just a fact. I don’t choose email because I’m a coward or I’m shy. I choose email because it’s what I’m used to and from my point of view, I find it far less intrusive than a phone call. I make calls when they’re necessary or I need to move really fast but if I’m just trying to see if someone’s interested in a job, I think email is very effective. When you cold call them, they tend to be irritated because you’re bothering them at work and they say “Send me an email” anyway. Also, email gives them a way to get in touch with you whenever they have time which is why I get a lot of emails after midnight.

Yet I don’t hide behind email. I use it as the tool for which it was invented. I still make sure I interact with people. The idea of not being able to meet people and talk to people is a little alarming to me yet it’s becoming more and more frequent. Sure, the younger generation interacts but they do it on Facebook and via text and via instant messenger. It makes it far easier to stay inside and be a hermit than it used to.

It’s just weird to consider life without the internet. I was reflecting back on that today which is what inspired this blog. I remember life without the internet. It really wasn’t so different just a little less…virtual. I used to be addicted to the set of Encyclopedia Brittanica’s that had been left in our house by the previous owners. They were missing one of the “M”’s which was a pain in the rear but I still made full use of them. I went to the library a lot more. I went to the mall. I read more magazines.

You get the picture. There was life before the internet and it’s a life I remember. It’s just now, I use it constantly at work and at home. For work, it’s our lifesource- it’s how we find resumes and resumes find us. At home, it’s my tool for everything from the pups having an upset tummy to me having to order a new Lawnmower from Home Depot and finding out which is the best model and value for money.

It’s really amazing how life evolves and it happens so quickly but, simultaneously, so gradually that we don’t really notice. It’s only when we stop and actually look back that we see how far things have come and in how short of a time. I’m sure the same can be said for many things in life but, for me, it’s in technology I notice it most. It’s not just the evolution of life from the actual to the virtual but the streamlining of the technology itself. We no longer have the giant, clumsy computers and mainframes from “War Games.” We have tiny, thin, light-as-a-feather laptops that we can shove in a backpack. We now watch movies without having to insert anything into a machine instead of massive videotapes that could get chewed up if you forgot to clean the player.

I could go on and on. It’s just weird to look back to less than 20 years ago and think that there was yet to be a Google or an Amazon.com or an iTunes when these things are such a part of our lives nowadays. In a way, it forced us to be more self-sufficient but, in a way, we wasted a lot of time and a lot more gas to get places.

As with everything there are pluses and negatives. However, even though it’s a massive time waster and allows us to hide behind our electronic personas, I choose to think that the invention of the internet is a good thing.

After all, without the internet, I wouldn’t be blogging about there being an internet. Which is actually quite surreal when I stop and think about it.

Perhaps I better not. This blog is long enough already.

Happy Friday, have a great weekend and thanks for reading!

Playing "Office"...

When I was a child, one of my favourite games to play was "Office." My dad had this old, old computer from work. It was before the days of quick loading computer software, USB's and flash drives. It didn't have a mouse. It was an all in one machine that didn't have an operating system. What it had was its own special language and nothing but green text on the screen. I was too young to know what it really did but I did manage to make up games on it. I'd sit and turn it on, typing away as if I was actually doing something. Nothing every happened except I made it beep. Yet, I had a fine old time typing and pretending I was in my very own office.

Other times, I'd sit at my desk in my room and pretend I was sitting in an office, my pens ready to go. I had a child's typewriter and I would type Very Important Things on it. It was one of the old school typewriters, no correction tape and an old ribbon that would dry up if you didn't ink it.

Office was one of my favourite games to play by myself. I think I attempted to solicit other players but it was hard to get anyone interested in writing letters and things.

You might wonder why I'm telling you about yet more of my rather odd childhood games. The reason is that, today, at my new job, I managed to finally accomplish that which I'd only pretended to have as a child: I have my own office.

It really isn't the first office I've had. When I was a legal secretary, I had an office but it wasn't really mine. It was a room they stuck me in and I was across the hall from our grumpy office manager who could watch my every move. When I was in my international market research job, I had an office but, again, this was just a room they put me in and we had to swap constantly. It wasn't really mine.

The office today is mine. I'm finally in a job where I don't have to be administrative support as I have in the past. I don't have to type memos for anyone. I'm in my very own office doing my very own job. I have my own supplies and even have the freedom to order more supplies if I'm lacking anything. I have a new computer with the newest versions of Windows and Microsoft Office on it. I can close my door. I can decorate my office.

It's an exciting thing. I think if I hadn't been so...deprived in my last job, it probably wouldn't seem like such a big thing. However, when you used to have to take whatever office supplies were available or bring in your own and you didn't get new software, even when you needed it....it's the small things that make a new job all the better.

Better yet, I'm getting training.

(Private aside to one of my readers, known as Raindancer...YES, Raindancer, there IS such thing as training in a job! It is not a myth! It exists. I am living proof that it is possible!)

This, again, may not seem that unusual but...it actually is compared to my last couple of jobs. There was no training in those except to possible read a handbook. In this job, I'm sitting down with my boss and learning things.

It's exciting. I won't lie and say it was a perfect day. First days are always awkward. It's a strain to have to keep taking in the new information and to get to know the coworkers who have been working together for years. Yet, they all seem so nice. I'm a bit alarmed by that. It's a bit like the first time I went to Chick-Fil-A. That is the first fast restaurant where everyone in there was happy, genuinely friendly and seemed to like their job. I thought it was creepy at first, being used to the typical fast food experience of having someone take your order without making eye contact and being as slow and unfriendly as possible. Then I realized that it was a good thing. I like going to Chick-Fil-A.

My office is a bit like Chick-Fil-A. My coworkers have been there for years. They like their jobs, the office and one another. They're willing to share knowledge without trying to steal credit for each other's work. They don't gather in each others' offices, close the door and whisper.

It's a change and a welcome one. While my first day was exhausting, I'm pretty sure I'm going to like it a lot.

If you've ever seen the movie, "Working Girl," there's a scene at the end of the movie where Melanie Griffith's character gets a promotion. She goes in and sits down at the secretary's desk only to discover that it's not her desk, she actually has earned an office.

Today, I felt like that. I felt the inner child in me rejoice at the actual realization of what used to be my imagination.

And, this time, I didn't just randomly hit buttons on a computer and pretend to do something. I actually hit real keys and did something. Also, I have a mouse and the screen isn't just green text.

I've come a long way, baby.

Happy Tuesday!

Computer Frustration...

There's nothing more infuriating than a computer that doesn't work.

We expect them to work. They're man-made machines, completely user controlled with no minds of their own and yet...somehow...we assign a mind to them anyway.

Take me, tonight, for example. I've been in awe of quite how quickly the evenings go by. For me, they're increments of time: Time to exercise, time to make dinner, time to relax/watch TV, time to be productive. By the time the evening is done, I'm still going to bed later than planned, not sure how, in the short hours between work and sleep, I was really supposed to relax.

Tonight, I seemed to have time. I made a nice dinner- shitake mushroom in white wine sauce with spaghetti- and still had time to relax. Just as I was about to turn on another episode of "Worst Cooks in America," I remembered that I needed to scan my new health insurance card and email it to the nurse in my doctor's office. No big deal...my new printer is a printer/scanner/copier all in one.

Except, it seems, just like with anything electronic, nothing is ever simple. It turns out that I need a special software program to scan. I thought I'd installed it. After all, when I installed my new printer, it took no less than two hours to install everything to get it set up. Turns out that in the two hours, it never installed the software needed to scan. So, tonight, I inserted the CD ROM that came with the printer. I'm not joking, it took almost 30 minutes for the disk to finally stop churning, to stop telling me it was 'scanning my system' before it just...froze. I was infuriated.

At the same time, I had also wanted to watch a TV download that I'd bought on iTunes. Once upon a time, I was a naughty Monkeypants who used to download things for free. These days, I only do that when I have to because a) I'm worried about getting caught, b) iTunes has made music affordable and, c) It takes WAY too long with my crappy internet provider to download a file illegally.

So, when I told iTunes I wanted to buy the file, it said "You need to download a new version of iTunes first." Well, honestly, I think I did that last week but because it's iTunes, I wouldn't have been surprised if they'd told me there was a new version five minutes after I'd downloaded the last NEW version. So I finally said "Ok, whatever, give me the new iTunes." Well, it's now been a good 30 minutes and it's still downloading Safari, the Apple Web Browser. Ironically, I didn't WANT to download Safari but iTunes decided I needed it. Thus, even thugh I tried to skip that part, it's now been 35 minutes and iTunes is only 50 percent downloaded. What do you want to bet they tell me to restart my system when I'm done?

Thus, basically, the moral of the story is that though computers have no real brain nor do they have a free will, a soul, body or mind, they still manage to govern our lives. It doesn't matter if they're in cell phone format, laptop format, iPod format....computers govern us.

To illustrate my point, for the last 20 minutes, I've been attempting to download the software to make my scanner actually scan. It just stopped at told me I was running Windows in Safe Mode and thus it could not continue. I am NOT running Windows in Safe Mode. It's perfectly normal....or as perfectly normal as Windows gets. It now means that I am unable to get my scanner to scan. Which means that I can't get my insurance card to my nurse. This means tomorrow at work, I'll have to run around like a chicken, trying to find someone who has their computer set up to accept copy machine scans. I used to have this capability but since we moved offices, that went out the window. It also doesn't help that our tech support person tends to pretend I don't exist and conveniently forgets whenever I ask him for assistance. He's done this more than three times now. I don't think it's coincidence.

So, essentially, tonight is one of those nights in which I've wasted at least an hour of my life trying to be productive but failing miserably. I wanted to get my productive stuff done, then relax with an episode of online TV. Instead, I've now been trying to get my computer to run something, anything for a very long time. I'm very frustrated.

I suppose what I really want is the pipe dream: that a computer work when I expect it to without argument. I know...nothing is ever simple. Yet, therein lies the rub....why CAN'T anything be simple? Why can't my computer do what I tell it instead of making me wait 30-60 minutes to find out that it's really been stringing me along?

I don't know but I'm going to find out. The hardest part about knowing something about computers it that you can't really call anyone to help. I've done enough tech support that I know why my computer hates me....and I know enough to know that it doesn't really hate me...I just feel like it does.

I suppose it's the same for anyone in a profession...when you're qualified to answer your own questions, you're a little screwed if you get stuck. Of course, you could ask someone else's opinion but there's that little matter of pride in which you really have to suck it up to ask someone else to figure out what's wrong when you can't help but think you should be able to figure it out yourself.

I admit, I've done that before- asked for computer help. It's resulted in someone sitting at my computer, trying everything I tried and then finally declaring they don't know what's wrong. It's not that I'm that good...it's just that I know enough to try the common fixes and even enough to try the intermediate ones. When they don't work, I get a little flummoxed. Usually, it's something that takes time to figure out.

Thus, I really just need to learn to be patient and not yell at my computer like it can actually hear me. It can't...I know this. If it could, I'm certain it would probably electrocute me while laughing and say, "That's what you get for calling me a piece of crap!"

And yes, I have called my computer a piece of crap and, uh, stronger insults within it's range of hearing. Thus, I'm not horribly surprised that it's trying to spite me by not doing what I want. It's only normal I suppose. Except as I said, a computer can't think...right?

Oh, I hope not. Otherwise...we're in trouble.

Happy Thursday!