Why is my computer freezing and sending me blue screens? I guess I should run some system diagnostics. I ran them a month ago and it said everything is hunky dory. If it’s so hunky and dory, why does it keep freezing?
(FREEZE!!)
NO, Marilyn! You cannot run diagnostics while surfing. Bad Marilyn.
(FREEZE!!)
NO you cannot check email. Okay, check, but don’t send anything. Ow. Frozen again.
(PUZZLEMENT)
Why is it prompting me to update the drivers I just updated? Should I do it again? Nah. Waste of time.
(BAFFLED CONFUSION)
Why is Dell installing the software again? This is the fifth time. It’s installed. Geez. It’s just doing this to aggravate me.
(HEADACHE, POUND, POUND, THUD)
I need lunch. Afraid to leave the computer. Who knows what mischief it might get into?
(STOMACH GURGLING)
Bathroom, I don’t care what’s going on. I gotta go NOW. Computer? Sit! Stay! Don’t do anything while I’m gone.
(FREEZE!!)
I guess no matter how boring it is, I should NOT play Scrabble while running diagnostics.
(FREEZE!!)
I suppose this means running diagnostics is not a perfect opportunity to thoroughly clean the keyboard.
(HUH??)
My system is fine. Absolutely nothing wrong. So what’s with all those Blue Screens of Death referencing my video card? Huh? Let’s stress test the video card.
(ZZ)
This is more boring than watching paint dry. Are we there yet?
(RESULTS!)
Everything is freaking fine. I’ll tell myself that the next time it locks up. Thanks for nothing. Another afternoon I can never get back.
It’s the little things that trigger epiphanies. Those tiny moments of recognition that make me say “Oh! I see!”
A few days ago, I took my Canon S100 out of my shoulder bag where it lives. I’m very careful with my cameras. When I’m shooting, I’m so focused that unless I adhere to a strict routine, I lose stuff. As I’ve gotten older, I lose stuff anyway and I don’t want to lose any cameras, so I follow my checklist to make sure that no camera or accessory gets left behind. I pull the camera out of my bag, stuff its sleeve in my pocket, take my pictures, and put it all back. When I get home, I pop the SD card out, plug it into the computer, download the pictures, clear the card and return it to the camera. Back into my bag it goes. I know if I keep to the program, I will always have a camera near at hand. For some reason, the last time I used it, I didn’t put the S100 away and left it next to the monitor. I’m sure I had a reason, though I can’t recall what it was.
I forgot it until last night when I picked my bag and noticed how light it felt. What was missing? Ah, the camera.
“Hmm,” I said. “I didn’t realize that little camera adds so much heft to my bag.”
It was late. I was on my way to bed, but stopped in my office to collect the cordless phone to return it to its cradle in the bedroom. I noticed the camera lying on the desk. I picked up the camera and thought “Gee, I should swap the battery and charge this one. I’ve been using it a lot.” I have quite a few spare batteries. There is nothing that will ruin a shoot more completely than having a battery die in the middle and not having a replacement with you.
I popped the battery out and went to put it in the charger. I looked at my power strip. Six chargers. Impressive for a strip that only has 6 plugs.
This being a Canon battery, I tried putting it in the first Canon charger on the strip. It didn’t fit. I tried the next but it didn’t fit there either, which shouldn’t have surprised me because it was Panasonic and this was a Canon battery, but who can read black lettering on a black charger in dim light anyhow?
There was one charger in the strip I hadn’t tried. Unsurprisingly, the battery popped right into place. I looked around and realized I have two more Olympus chargers nearby and an off brand charger whose purpose I do not recall. The chargers in this group each attach to one arm of an octopus splitter. With a wrinkle of concern, I realized I had another little camera on the way and no room for a charger. I was going to have to add another strip. I wondered where I could possibly put it. Things are getting crowded in the electrical part of the office.
Epiphany. Bong. Whack.
I have a lot of cameras, computers, tablets, readers, telephones, printers, transmitters, routers, modems, Roku, DVD players and music making thingies. I don’t even know how many there are. I don’t even know where I’ve put them all. Or if they work. They have accumulated while my back was turned. There are all the old ones I used until I got newer ones. Then there are the back ups I never use, but have in case a piece of equipment fails. Spare telephones, extra cameras. Even a couple of miscellaneous computers.
Everything uses batteries including items that plug into a socket somewhere and most things seem to need a WiFi feed. No room is exempt, from kitchen to bedroom. We have electronic toothbrushes in our bathrooms. After even the briefest power outage, my entire house starts blinking.
Night is lit up by the soft glow of red, blue and green LEDs. It’s never fully dark or entirely silent. Everything flickers, whirrs and buzzes, beeps and dings. The telephones variously whoop, bong or play obnoxiously loud music. Even my wallpaper (the stuff on the computer, not the walls in the kitchen) makes splashing sounds as my virtual dolphins leap in an electronic sea.
My universe collapses in the face of a power outage. Nothing works if the power’s down. I am slavishly devoted to technology and the thought of having no electricity for even a brief period makes me shiver with dread.
Everyone these days seems to have a vast quantity of electronic gadgetry, no matter what they say because nothing is simple anymore. The microwave, the refrigerator, the range and the oven are computerized. Those are merely the basics.
I had to reboot my bed the other day.
I may not in theory need so much stuff, but I can’t imagine giving anything up. I love it all. I even love the things I don’t use, cell phones that served me well and obsolete computers or cameras which have been replaced by newer models. They are my Hall of Fame collection.
Accumulation will never stop. Garry’s new computer is on the way and who knows how many peripheral items it will spawn.
I swear this has all crept up on me, slipped into my life a gadget at a time — a computer, a modem, a router, a laptop, another computer another and another. New cameras replaced old ones and they were themselves replaced by even newer gear. New gadgets were invented and became indispensable. As technology continues to evolve, each piece of equipment will be replaced eventually by newer versions. Like virtual seasons in an endless cycle of beeping, flashing and whirring change.
Excuse me. My oven is beeping. Dinner must be ready.
Is Microsoft’s approach, which involves trying to force feed Windows 8 to unwilling users, bold? Arrogant? Stupid? Who cares? How about all three? What is over-the-top stupid — not to mention self-destructive — is trying to stuff an operating system down users’ throats when they obviously do notwant it.
I bought a PC for my husband last night to replace his 6-year-old desktop. I ended up buying almost exactly the same computer, but with much more memory, hard drive space, graphics support … more of everything and blazingly fast, too. Ironically, it also cost less than the old desktop. Prices have come down a good deal in the past 6 years, at least for desktop computers.
Did I order a Windows 8 machine? No, I bought a Windows 7 machine because he would be lost in Windows 8 and so would I. He is not computer savvy and does not give a hoot about what’s under the hood of the OS nor does he care to learn. But he does need a computer with an up-to-date version of Word, PowerPoint and Outlook. He needs to be able to get on and off the Internet, receive and send mail, create documents, keep a calendar, and exchange files. He hates finger painting and will never use a tablet, prefers the comfort of his desk, the big flat screen monitor and full size keyboard.
If I’m going to be honest about it, so do I. Laptops are fine, but some of us spend a lot of hours at the computer and we type faster and more accurately on a standard keyboard. I love my big bright HD monitor and for editing photographs, the laptop is never going to be first choice, even though it has the same software as my desktop. It simply means that my husband and I are probably always going to have both a desktop and a laptop and they will serve different purposes in our lives. That ought to be a plus for business since we end up keeping 4 computers for two of us (not counting Kindles and other small devices).
It ought to be easy to get an operating system with which we feel comfortable and familiar. We should not be forced to use something a corporation deems better. What in the world is wrong with supporting both Windows 7 and 8? It would hardly be the first time Microsoft has supported multiple operating systems. They supported NT and Windows for years and still support various versions of every operating system including Windows 8.
But Microsoft is bound and determined to do it their way, no matter what it costs. We are going to march to their drum beat. Or else. Or else we give up and buy a Mac? Switch to Linux? Wait a while until something else that will support our familiar applications comes onto the market? Are the marketing wonks at Microsoft so out of touch they believe they can force me to buy something I don’t want? What in the world makes them think that? As a side note, I should point out that what people do not like about Windows 8 is not how it works or anything complicated. They don’t like the user interface. I think it’s ugly, in addition to taking away familiar functionality with which I am comfortable. If they just made Windows 8 look and feel like Windows 7, it would sell. And yes, they could do it. They just don’t want to.
I don’t want to buy what they are marketing. Who will win? I think I will, or maybe, we will all lose. Because in this fragile economy, losing a few big players like Microsoft, Dell and other Microsoft dependent corporations would probably be that final nail in our economic coffin.
Meanwhile, collectively and individually, we aren’t marching to Microsoft’s drummer. We aren’t buying their act or their operating system. PC sales are falling through the floor. Microsoft stubbornly insists everyone will do it their way while we dig in our heels and say “Hell no!” They obviously don’t get it. They think it’s about technology, but it’s really about choice. It’s about comfort. It’s about freedom.
I’d have bought a different computer for Garry, but I refused to buy Win8. I don’t want it. Neither do most of the people I know. We are called consumers and it doesn’t matter how great Microsoft thinks their new OS is. They may even be right and it still doesn’t matter. If we don’t buy it, they are screwed. And so, in the long run, are we. They are being incredibly short-sighted, which I think is a special kind of stupid. How many computer companies have disappeared because they wouldn’t bow to the market?
Remember Digital Equipment Corporation? DEC was Massachusetts’ biggest employer and it is gone, baby, gone. By the time they finally realized that being better wasn’t selling their products, it was too late. Down in flames they went.
When I was a child and my mother tried to make me eat food she believed was good for me and which I did not want to eat, I clamped my jaws shut and refused. It didn’t matter how long I was forced to sit at the table. I would not eat it if I didn’t want it. No amount of coercion, coaxing, or arguments changed anything. I said no, I meant no. If my mommy couldn’t force me to eat the mashed potatoes, why does Microsoft think it can make me buy Windows 8? And what in the world makes them think they have the right to try?
It starts in the kitchen when I push the button and start the coffee. Without coffee, the day cannot begin.
Nan is there, acting as if she has never been fed.
Bonnie will fling herself at me until I produce a biscuit.
Then to the office, coffee in hand. I’ll be there for hours, until I finish reading and writing.
I watch the world through my office window.
Books, cameras, dolls, and high tech gear touch my life as I pass through my day.
Time to fit in some shopping. You can’t buy veggies online. Yet.
On a good day, I make time to take a few pictures.
Through the door, into the bedroom. It’s late, time to sleep.
The day ends in the warm comfort of our bed. I love our bed. It always brings a sigh.
Waking up to the light in the bedroom, my day begins with coffee and ends where it began. Not exciting, perhaps, but it’s a form-fitting world for me and mine. I wanted this to be an ordinary day, like most days. There are busier days, days spent away from home, at doctor’s offices and (alas) working … but this is a regular average day in my life. Nothing special, nothing fancy. Welcome to my little world.
These days every time I read an article in ZDNet or any of the techno-blogs, they are casually talking about getting rid of the Windows desktop and making basic softwaresubscription-based, something that will benefit the corporate bottom lines of suppliers of software, but which will hurt millions upon millions of users. They talk as if subscriptions are no big deal. It may not be a big deal for them, but it’s a big deal to me and possibly, a lot of you too.
Subscriptions are much more expensive than buying software, installing it and updating only when you really need a new version. Let’s look at a non-MS example. I have a license for Photoshop. This is expensive software that I need to be a serious amateur photographer. I do NOT make money at photography, but I love it, am pretty good at it and there isn’t any product on the market that comes near Photoshop in terms of what it can do and how well it does it. So, I decided to upgrade from CS5 to CS6. Previously, this has involved calling Adobe, giving my serial number and member ID, then paying them $200 plus shipping. They send me a DVD and we are done for the next few years.
This time, I spent over an hour on the phone explaining, over and over, that $49 per month to subscribe to Photoshop when I live on a fixed retirement income is impossible. That’s just about $600 a year for Photoshop. I don’t have that kind money to spend. Nor will I ever have it because that’s the meaning of “fixed income.” It means that the amount never goes up. Ever. You are lucky if it doesn’t go away, but you can be absolutely certain it will never be more.
Millions of people live on fixed incomes and many more survive on minimal incomes, yet they need computers and software. Students, retirees, disabled people and unemployed people trying to find work are among those millions. People whose incomes are not in the 6 digit realm, like teachers, policeman, firefighters. The clerks in your bank and the guy who fixes your car aren’t nailing down big figure salaries.
Computers are basic tools these days. You can’t apply for a job without a computer. You can’t submit a manuscript for publication or even try to find a publisher without a computer. Computers and electronic information and money transfer is basic to modern life everywhere on earth. An internet connection is essential. It is not less important to the elderly, retired, or to those with disabilities. To a disabled person, that high-speed connection is the difference between a life worth living and a living death.
In the real world, many people … probably MOST people …. don’t have much (or any) slack in their budgets. They aren’t going to be able to pay for monthly subscriptions for software. I don’t want anyone to tell me about “free” apps. Unless someone makes a lot more apps that do a lot more a lot better than the ones I’ve seen so far, there is no way they will replace the applications we use. The developers and marketing wonks who tell us we can get an app for that don’t use those apps to do their own work. I guarantee they are using sturdy installed applications. I’ll bet they aren’t storing it all in a cloud either, that they have back up drives and servers to protect data and keep it under their own control. What a bunch of hypocrites these people are. How I resent how they toy with my life.
In one way or another over the past few years, I have been informed that being old and living on short money means I don’t need Photoshop. I don’t need Outlook. I don’t need cable television. I don’t need books. I don’t need email. I don’t need anything but generic medications and minimal health care. I should be grateful that I have food and a roof over my head. I don’t need a Kindle, a computer or a camera. I can buy my clothing second-hand, scrounge for medication. Whatever people with somewhat high incomes deem necessary for themselves is not necessary for me. Apparently when I retired — or in my case became disabled, life being neither fair nor predictable — I cashed in my rights to everything other than life itself and I’m not sure I’m entitled to that, either.
I have long known that corporation were heartless, but these computer guys have no moral compass either. Zilch. They have no idea why they do what they do, that software has a purpose. It isn’t an end in itself. It is intended to solve real problems for living human beings. It’s not just cool toys to play with or a way for them to make a good living.
These products and tools are important to users. Critical. The market for technology is not those who invent it. The market is everyone: people supporting families, struggling to feed a family on an income too small for the purpose. All the folks trying to survive hard times, to improve their living conditions, to get by with very little are the real end-users for all of this stuff. To make it inaccessible to any but the well-to-do is the equivalent of turning off our electricity and water and has much the same effect. Computers and software are not luxuries and haven’t been for years.
Having tools to make pictures, keep complicated medical and study schedules and many more life functions are not optional extras. Corporations, big software companies like Microsoft and Adobe, our so-called Congress, insurance companies are all playing with our lives. We don’t matter at all except as a source of income for them.
As for ZDNet’s contention that the corporate world will have to accept Windows 8 (the implication being that they have no choice in the matter), I have a news flash. I’ve recently been visiting companies with whom I’ve worked in the past. They are switching to Macs. Entire companies are dropping Windows. Small companies right now because they aren’t as heavily invested in an operating system, but small organizations are the bellwethers for the big trends that follow. These groups are doing their development on Unix or Linux boxes — which is not new because they have been using them for development for years — and everything else on Macs.
Why I asked? Because they won’t touch Windows 8. They don’t like it. They won’t buy it. Just a little reality check for anyone listening. You cannot force people to adopt things they do not like, no matter how big and powerful you think you are. When you stop listening to your customers, your users, the people who made you big in the first place, you are likely to discover as so many others have before you that the world needs you a lot less than you thought. Where’s DEC? Where’s Wang? Where’s RCA? Westinghouse? They’ve either disappeared or been absorbed to become nothing more than a logo and a memory.
The business world is ripe for the plucking. They want an operating system that will run familiar applications as Windows did. Nature and business abhor a vacuum. I bet they are already circling. Not just Mac, but many others.
Earth to ZDNet: there is life on the planet! You might want to get back in touch with it.
Every once in a while, someone invents something that makes life a little brighter. In this case, let me introduce you to Roku.
Roku is a little streaming device that works off your wi-fi connection so that you can stream movie and premium channels, both free and subscription-based to your television. I wanted to get Netflix and Hulu Plus, but I don’t like watching movies and other stuff on my computer and have no use for an expensive gaming device. I have a living room with comfy chairs and a big screen. That’s where I want to watch movies and television.
The Roku comes in different flavors — although they all work the same way. More expensive “advanced” models offer additional or augmented options, such as high-definition streaming, gaming, and earphone connections through the remote control.
In our case, there wasn’t much point in getting a very advanced model. Our high-definition television is an older model and only has one high-definition port which is already occupied with the connection to the cable box so we weren’t going to be able to take advantage of Roku’s 1080P capabilities and we have no interest in gaming.
The price is right: the entry-level model is just under $50, the next model up (the one I got) is just under $60 and the top of the line is around $100. It’s cheaper than any gaming machine. It’s small and connecting it is so easy that I could do it without help (though there were some nervous moments).
Basically, you plug A into B, B into C, C into D then follow the prompts. The instructions promise that this will bring out your inner geek. My inner geek is not hiding. I just don’t like dealing with hardware. I still don’t really believe that electricity isn’t going to spill out of the walls.
I got it put together and by golly, it worked. Despite appearances, there are only a very few free services. Most of the services are by subscription. I already belong to Amazon Prime, so I had one to start with. I wanted Netflix and was willing the pay the $7.99 a month for it. I haven’t decided about Hulu Plus yet. I figure I’ll jump into this slowly. Roku is as easy to set up as they say it is. And it works.
The bad news. It is what it is and that’s all it is. It is not configurable. There are no options to make it easier to use for people with special needs. There’s no help for the hard of hearing or visually impaired or anyone else who isn’t nimble of finger, sharp of eye and keen of ear.
The “search” capabilities are primitive and don’t hardly deserve to be called “search capabilities.” The tools, such as they are, are clumsy and slow. It’s easier to find whatever it is on your computer than go back and pick it up on the television. Keep your laptop handy because you’ll need it. Closed captions are available on Netflix, and I believe Hulu also. You can’t set it up so that anything on any channel that has closed captions will display them. You have to turn them on for each channel. Amazon doesn’t offer closed captions at all (shame on them). That’s not the fault of Roku. You can’t display captions if none are provided.
This is a fine piece of equipment for the price and it does what it promises. It’s absolutely worth the money, whether you buy the ultra economy model or the top of the line.
Is it going to replace your expensive movie packages from your cable or satellite company? Maybe yes, maybe not. It depends on your viewing habits, your technical aptitude, creativity and how your cable company has structured their prices. They don’t make it easy to delete pieces of your package. However, if you currently just can’t afford movie packages from your local cable or dish provider, this is a godsend. It’s affordable, easy to use (really as easy as they say it is) and it works.
Roku needs a better, more sophisticated user interface and a more efficient way of searching. There is a great deal to watch but finding it isn’t easy. Practice helps. It takes a while to get used to it. I’m fine on Amazon because I can set up my watch list on the computer and it is automatically available on Roku. You can also set up favorites and preferences for Netflix via the computer (easier than doing it directly on the Roku). I believe Hulu offers a similar option. You need a computer to get the most out of the Roku, but most of us have a few of them.
Standard set up couldn’t be much simpler.
Eventually, I will figure out how to find what I am looking for more efficiently. I figure Roku will also make a few improvements to the interface. In the meantime, it beats out the competition by several country miles (unless you are absolutely married to iTunes) and the price is more than reasonable. You get a lot of bang for your buck.
Note: You need one unit per television, but you don’t need a different account for Netflix or whatever for each Roku. One account works on all your devices: Roku, gaming devices, computers, tablets, telephones, and so on. It’s a pretty fair deal, especially compared to the price-gouging of traditional providers. Check them out. You may find it is exactly what you’ve been waiting for.
Lately I’ve been reading a lot of posts focusing on how civilization is disintegrating because of technology. The loss of privacy, clearly because of websites like Facebook. The prevalence of moronic rumors on the Internet that for incomprehensible reasons, people actually take seriously. And of course, the loss of language and relationship skills by young people who communicate entirely by texting in code that no one over the age of 18 can decipher not to mention the pernicious effects of electronic books replacing paper and ink. And finally, my personal favorite, the paranoid belief that mobile phones are scrambling everyone’s’ brains and are probably responsible for the epidemic of worldwide stupidity.
I’m not convinced we had any privacy to lose. If you weren’t a recluse living in a cave, then you lived amidst people. In towns, villages and cities. In tribes, settlements and family groups. In metropolitan areas, we form villages within the larger population. We call them neighborhoods. You don’t come from New York or Boston.
You come from Park Slope or Southie, Roxbury or Astoria. As long as we live in and around other people, they know all about us. They know a lot more than we wish they did. You sneeze and your neighbors say a collective “gesundheit.” Have a fight with your spouse and everyone knows every detail the following morning. Gossip is the meat and potatoes of human relationships. Call it networking or whatever you like: we talk about each other all the time. Privacy is an illusion.
The big difference is you can use your own computer to tell total strangers everywhere in the world all your personal business. But that’s your own choice. It’s entirely voluntary, but millions of people do it every day. I suspect — on the whole — we care a lot less about privacy than we say we do. Sure, we want to protect our bank accounts and credit cards from being stolen, but otherwise? How much do you really care who knows what’s going on in your life?
We are herd animals. We are nosy. We gossip. Knowing your neighbors’ business doesn’t require technology, just eyes and ears. For broadcast purposes, a mouth works as well any other device.
One of the more common assumptions about technology is that this stuff is more important to young people than older folks. Older people are supposed to resist new technology, to be stuck in our ways and refuse to move on.
I recall thinking along the same lines when I was young and stupid. Young people underestimate their elders. Maybe it helps them gain the courage to face uncertain futures, but as one of those Old People, I find it annoying.
People my age have not rejected technology. Au contraire, we embrace it with enormous enthusiasm. Technology has impacted us more than any other age group. Computers give us access to the world, let us to remain actively in touch with scattered friends and family. It helps us know what people are thinking. Digital cameras with auto-focus compensate for aging eyes. Miniaturization makes more powerful hearing aids so that people who would be condemned to silence can remain part of the world. Pacemakers prolong life; instrumented surgeries provide solutions to what used to be insoluble medical problems and lets us keep active into very old age. Technology has saved us not only from early death, but from losing touch.
We can watch movies whenever we want, the old ones from childhood and the new ones just out of theaters. We can view them in comfort on huge screens as good as the movies, but with better sound and cheaper snacks … plus a convenient “pause” button if you need to hit the bathroom or kitchen.
Virtually every one of us has a cell phone, uses electronic calendars as well as a wide range of applications to do everything from post-processing photographs and balancing our bank accounts, to cooking meals.
My generation consumes technology voraciously, hungrily.
Unlike the kids, we don’t take it for granted. We didn’t always have it. We remember the old days and despite all those nostalgic postings on the web, most of us are glad we don’t live there anymore.
We can’t all repair a computer, but neither can the kids. They know how to use them … my granddaughter was using a computer when she was three … but she has no idea how a computer works and would be hard put to explain the difference between the operating system and an application. Most of her friends are equally ignorant. They are on top of the world when things work but if anything goes wrong, suddenly Granny transforms to Computer Guru.
For teenagers and young adults, technology is no miracle. They don’t need to understand it. They feel about computers the way we felt about electricity: we didn’t need to know how it worked. We just put the plug in the socket and turn on the lights.
There is a down side to technology as there’s a down side to everything. An hour’s power outage and we are lost. Dependence is not what worries me. I’m no survivalist. Without modern technology, I wouldn’t make it through a week.
I worry that young folks are not learning how to talk to each other and will have a hard time forming relationships. Not that we did all so well ourselves, but at least we talked to each other.
The ubiquitous availability of social networking gives kids the illusion of having lots of friends … yet many of them have no real friends … not the kind of friends you can depend on and who will hang on through a lifetime.
I don’t want anyone to give up their electronic goodies … but it would be nice if there were more direct communication, human to human. I have watched groups of teens sit around in a room, but instead of talking, they send texts to one another. Good relationships need a more touchy-feely approach.
All of us have gotten a bit lazy about relationships. We send an email when we should pick up the phone. We pick up the phone when we should make a visit. There’s nothing electronic that can replace a hug.
Yet I believe civilization will endure. Stupid people were always stupid. They always will be. Those who believe nonsensical Internet rumors without bothering to learn the truth would never have been truth-seekers anyhow. Before we had Internet rumors, we had plenty of regular rumors. They didn’t travel quite as fast as they do on the Internet, but they got the job done. The problem isn’t computers; it’s people.
I don’t get why people have a problem with electronic books. As far as I am concerned, reading is good no matter what form the words take. For me, electronic books are a dream come true. I will always love the smell and feel of paper and ink, but I am glad to not need more space for books. I’m love my Kindle. Nobody had to slay a tree for the book I’m reading.
I will always love bookstores, the feel and weight a book, the smell of ink on paper, the gentle crack of the spine when you open a new one, but I only buy special books, first editions, reference books.
The good old days weren’t that terrific. There were good things, but plenty of bad stuff. Ugly stuff. Institutionalized racism, a gap between classes far worse than today. Real oppression of women, so if you think we don’t get a fair shake now, you would never have survived growing up in the 1950s. Help wanted ads in newspapers were divided by sex; we had to wear skirts to school, even in the dead of winter.
Today, our houses are heated better. Basic household goods are relatively inexpensive. Wal-Mart sells cheap underwear. Don’t knock it: I hate spending money on underwear!
If you want an education, you can get one … no matter what your color or ethnicity. The legal barriers to individual development have been lowered. The world and the people in it are imperfect; there’s more than enough hate to go around and we’ll never see the end of war, but at least the law is changed. That is not a small thing. Human beings are good at hating. Laws can change the rules, but not human nature.
I wish the quality of entertainment was better and I wish they taught grammar in schools, yet I was never taught grammar and I’m reasonably literate. Those who love words will learn to use them by reading, listening and absorbing the music of language.
Language will continue to evolve but it has always been a moving target. It’s not changing because of computers. We don’t talk as they did in Olde England and future generations won’t talk — or write — like us.
The basic nature of humans hasn’t fundamentally changed. We have a savagery embedded in our DNA. I doubt anything will erase it. Will we evolve to the point where we are truly civilized and the hidden beast is gone? I doubt it. I believe we would lose our humanity along with our bestiality. It is our never-ending battle to tame our baser instincts that defines civilization.
That, and having a really fast Internet connection.
I was declared obsolete about 5 years ago. I had been getting progressively less relevant for a while, but after the dot coms went down in flames, the high-tech world changed dramatically. Venture capital disappeared and with it, the exciting little start-up companies that had been my bread and butter for decades.
Tech writers were replaced by automated systems. No one cared anymore whether or not the material produced was useful. Now that tech support had been exported, the same thinking was applied to documentation. It was declared unnecessary. Need help? Just call tech support on the other side of the world. Let your customers wait on hold, get disconnected multiple times, and finally, let them talk to someone who knows nothing and will provide dangerously incorrect information. Never provide a call back number so if the solution doesn’t work — and mostly, it won’t — make them go through the whole thing again. What could go wrong with this? Who needs writers?
A lot has gone wrong with this and much to my personal satisfaction, though rather late for my career, companies are discovering that people who buy expensive gear really do want documentation. They get downright irritable when their $5000 camera doesn’t have a manual.
I never intended to be a technical writer. I was going to be a “real” writer … great novels … literature. No idea what I would write about, but I would write, that was for sure. I did write many books, but just one novel. Everything else would be information and/or instructions and highly technical at that. For a gal who barely scraped through basic algebra and never finished a single physics or chemistry course, I picked up a lot along the way.
I started out with high literary hopes. I was an editor at Doubleday in the mid 1970s. Those were the halcyon days of publishing. We actually read manuscripts and were given TIME to read. People belonged to book clubs. Everyone read. There was TV, but you didn’t have 1000 channels and depending on how good your antenna was, you might not get much of anything except snow.
At the beginning of 1979, I moved to Israel and set up a life in Jerusalem.
It turned out that the only kind of writing done entirely in English rather than Hebrew, was technical writing. I wanted to earn a living, so if technical writing was what was available, I would be one. I moved from typewriters to computers and did so with a song in my heart. From the first time I discovered electronic cut-and-paste, I knew I’d found my milieu. I became part of the development team for DB-1, the first relational database. DB-1 was first developed in Israel at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot. IBM bought the product and proceeded to market it. It revolutionized the information world … and with the slightly later creation of data object linking, the guts of the Internet we all take so much for granted today was created.
I rode the high-tech wave until I became officially obsolete having been informed that “no one reads manuals.” Which is why I can’t figure out how to change the ISO setting on my camera. I can’t find the menu. The manual, probably produced by an automated process, doesn’t explain how to find anything and there are a frightening number of menus and layers of menus within menus, but I hope someday I will find the setting. I wouldn’t mind finding the metering control either. And a few other things. But I digress …
Thus I designed my downfall because simultaneously with databases, I worked on “artificial intelligence” (aka “bots”) systems. They were rough but the technology evolved very fast.
AI came of age in the 1990s and replaced people in a lot of areas. The most common example and possibly the most annoying is the “telephone tech support robot” … that stupid automated voice-activated telephone system that sends you into apoplectic fits as you attempt to get past it to talk to a human. Personally, I have found that shouting “Agent, agent, agent” at every prompt and repeatedly hitting zero usually gets me there. But they are getting trickier about that. Eventually, we will never be allowed to speak to a real live human being on the telephone and if we do, he or she will be about as helpful as the robot was.
The switch from human to “bot” has been particularly pernicious in the world of publishing. I enthusiastically helped build this world in which I am now obsolete, so the irony is not lost on me.
Modern authoring goes kind of like this: You write a book. You figure you’ve completed the hardest part and all you have to do is show it to someone who will read it. He or she will like it or not, and maybe you’ll have to show it to a bunch of people until finally, you get published.
Actually, the hard part is just beginning. You are now in a world controlled by “bots.” Gone are human acquisitions editors who read manuscripts and might notice that a manuscript, with some effort, could be a great book. Publishing houses do not accept manuscripts or even proposals directly from authors. You need an agent. Agents also use “bots” to search emails for key words, buzz words. If they do not find the words for which they are programmed to search, your inquiry goes to the cyber version of the circular file. If you don’t grab the interest of a piece of software in 500 words or less, you are not going to find an agent or publisher.
Max Perkins would never find a job In publishing today, Thomas Wolfe wouldn’t get a reading, much less mentoring. Would anyone publish Hemingway? William Faulkner? Or for that matter, J.R.R. Tolkien? There are far fewer publishers than there used to be, probably because there are also fewer readers. Those halcyon days really were “of yore.”
Fewer publishers, fewer books being published and that means that those wonderful old brick and mortar bookstores have virtually disappeared. Here and there, one survives, but where once there were many, now they are fast becoming extinct. In another generation, I’ll bet there will be none at all. Bookstores? My town doesn’t have one. There’s a Barnes and Noble 20 miles away at a mall, but it’s not a “real” bookstore anymore. In all of New England there are probably fewer than a couple of dozen honest-to-goodness bookstores and that includes Boston.
I wrote a book. It was nothing earth-shattering. Not bad, but unlikely to rock the literary world. The point is I sent (via email) proposals, sample chapters, letters, whatever they specified. I sent these inquiries, proposals, etcetera to countless agents and publishers. It turned out marketing was the critical component to getting published. The quality of the book never entered the equation. My book was never rejected. No editor so much as glanced at it.
I flunked marketing. When at last I was able to get an introduction to a real live agent, he died a couple of weeks later, before I had the opportunity to meet him. I took that as a Sign and self-published. At least I had the experience — and specialized software — to put together a press-ready book.
I love the Internet, but miss people. We no longer get to look one another in the eye. We can’t read each others’ faces, judge meaning by intonation or body language. We can’t hug. We don’t get to ‘pitch’ ideas. Not every person can fit their ideas into 500 words or less to be read by a robot. It’s an entirely different skill set than authoring. Ironically, I am one of those who has no knack for marketing myself, even though I wrote marketing material for others. I just can’t market my stuff. It’s different when it’s your own.
It’s a strange world. It’s no less strange than the fantasy worlds about which I read in my favorite novels. Exactly where do reality and fantasy separate? At what point do technology and magic separate?
This is the world I helped build so how dare I complain?
With camera in hand, exploring European lands, cultures, food, and drink...mostly with a plan, but sometimes enjoying the adventure of just getting lost.
hey always will be. Those who believe nonsensical 
