Just Words
Norm, shortly before entering next season's "Celebrity Rehab"
Remember the scene in City Slickers when Jack Palance tells Billy Chrystal the secret of life is his finger? If life can be boiled down to a sinewy tough guy’s digit, certainly technology can be distilled into something far more tangible.
And it can.
It’s just words.
Some time in the late 90′s my parents decided they needed an upgrade from the Apple IIE and dot matrix printer and bought a spiffy new Gateway with Windows 95. Welcome to the 20th century folks, it’s just about over!
What follows is an actual conversation I had with my father shortly thereafter.
Quick side note: Both my parents were school teachers; bright, educated, intelligent people worthy of much love, respect and admiration. Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, they’re not exempt from being the occasional subject of a humorous story at quite possibly their expense. OK. Maybe more than occassional. And more than “quite” possibly.
With that disclaimer, on with the story.
Me: How are you liking your new computer?
Dad: Much better now that I know what an “icon” is.
Think about that. Think about how many instructions tell you to click on a particular item’s icon to perform a particular task. Slightly challenging if you don’t know what an icon is, wouldn’t you say?
Technology is changing so fast, new words enter the vernacular on a seemingly daily basis. The internet culture thrives on it. What startup doesn’t dream of becoming eponymous for what they do? (If you don’t know what eponymous means, “google” it. See my point?)
For those of us who live online and sign up for new services while they’re still in beta, assimilating these new terms into our conversations is no more daunting than trying the latest seasonal latte flavor at Starbucks.
For anyone else (i.e., most people), this can make navigating through the online world as challenging as a vacation in Brazil with less than a year of Spanish under your belt (yes, I know they speak Portuguese there, that’s part of my point).
I may fall into the first group, but I can identify with the second. As someone who grew up with severe ADHD, I’ve spent much of my life feeling that everyone else in the room seems to have some background knowledge I’ve somehow missed out on.
But what I’ve learned is if I roll with it long enough, sooner or later I’ll figure out the key concepts I need to know so I can play too.
My point?
If you want to participate online, what’s important to understand are the overall concepts; don’t get too bogged down on the terminology.
Buy your plane ticket, get to Brazil, work out the language differences once you get there.
It’s just words.
Over the next few weeks I’ll be writing about some of the key concepts I’m referring to. The goal will be to help “demystify” the internet a bit for those who spend more of their lives offline than on.
What challenges have you faced getting yourself online? Any newbie “snafu’s” you might want to share? What advice would you give someone first venturing into the world of blogs and social networking?
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I think for non-techies, the key to bringing them into social networking is to find out for them what will be the “WHY,” the reason for them to hang up their proud Luddite buggy whips and spring forth into terrifying, foreign worlds.
How do they socialize now? They go to the bar, to the local diner, to church socials, to the library. Some attend live meetings of Kiwanis, Masons, Toastmaster, Lions. (I don’t know any young, tech-savvy people who participate in those. Well, maybe Toastmasters.) Some have signed up for email so they can get their organizations’ bulletins and notices, which are rarely mailed any more due to cost restrictions. My neighborhood community group has volunteers walk the neighborhoods and leave them on our doorsteps, which is cheaper than mailing, which would add about 65 cents of cost to each one. They email them to those of us who have emails, but I still get the hand-delivered ones. Those meetings are PACKED with older neighbors every other month.
My mom and her sisters (in their 60′s and 70′s) have become quite comfortable with the online world. My dad’s relatives, who have many more kids and grandkids, are more likely to get together in person and yap on the phone. I don’t know if that helps with your question, other than to see WHY someone might turn to social networking online, or why they might resist it.
@AnneMac “hang up their proud Luddite buggy whips” LOVE it! Good insights – thanks for sharing them here, Anne! :-)
“Think about how many instructions come now” – you’re absolutely right. Do this, click here, put your email address here, etc. etc. etc.
I think the internet is slowly starting to evolve from “SPAM”dome into a social outfit that people will get more and more involved in.
Thanks for the great post – learning the right terminology never hurts!
@Chuckpita As you know by my “mis-tweet” the other day, I’m very anti-spam! Do you think as we get more ways to connect, it’s still a matter of trying to stay one step ahead of the spammers & gamers? Or am I being too cynical?