The site has been moribund for a month but help is on the way. I was traveling most of September and often off the grid beyond even cell phone range. Now my old computer has crashed and I’m trying to retrieve data and learn my way around a new Windows system.
I still watch VHS tapes and have trouble operating an ATM machine. For a long time I prided myself on being a 20th, or even 19th Century kind of guy, and I was comfortable with that. But it’s clear I need to up my tech game. Much as we’d like to, none of us now can avoid the 21st Century.
Fortunately, I have a computer expert flying in . Which reminds me of my days in cubicle land, when we used to “call the IT guy” in much the same spirit our ancestors summoned a priest or shaman, hoping he could sprinkle corn pollen on the problem and make it go away. I’m not sure we’ve advanced so much today. Probably not one person in a thousand among us could explain what radio waves are, or why we use AC/DC current. I know how an internal combustion engine works, and I might even be able to fix one at need. But to me a computer is a magic box; when I recite the proper incantations, it does what I want it to do.
Maybe it’s an inescapable part of the human condition: the more we learn, the more we don’t understand.
Tracking Nana 