OP/ED: Confessions of a hopeless technophobe
By Kyra Hoggan
Since when did ‘Facebook-ing’ become a verb?
It’s amazing how quickly we can change or shift our societal lexicon – I was genuinely creeped out and, frankly, slightly offended the first time someone told me he had ‘Googled’ me – now I think nothing of being Googled, Facebooked or Tweeted…or of doing same to others (my Grandma’s going to read this and think I’ve joined a cult or am sniffing my son’s felt pens or something).
It’s a brave new world, indeed.
You have to understand, I’m the last of a dying breed of technophobes – yes, I run an Internet media outlet, but only because there’s a behind-the-scenes techie I can call, begging for help, before I tear those last couple of hairs out of my head. Me learning new tech looks much like those dreadful reality TV shows on drug-addiction intervention – lots of shaking, weeping, cursing, blame-throwing and, sometimes, violence, as I threaten to shoot the computer or the tech, whichever one manages to upset me more, first.
In my defense, though, times have changed awfully fast.
I remember when I used to joke that the only reason my VCR stopped flashing “12, 12, 12,” was because my five-year-old learned how to set the time on the stupid machine. God knows, I couldn’t figure it out.
Now, I tell that story and young people turn to me with a blank look and ask, “What’s a VCR?”
I never even bother mentioning albums or cassette players – I might overload their modern mental circuits.
Am I the only one who thinks the term ‘motherboard’ sounds unspeakably vulgar? How about ‘interfacing’ with someone? Shouldn’t they have to send you flowers, first?
At least I know I’m not alone – a guy with a tech support website confided this, “Compaq is considering changing the command ‘Press Any Key’ to ‘Press Return Key’ because of the flood of calls asking where the ‘Any’ key is.”
A net used to be something to catch fish in …but when I told my son, years ago, what to call a butterfly net, he said, “you mean they named this after the Internet? That’s just dumb.”
I swore I’d never learn to text (I already do text, I said, it’s called ’email’, thank you very much), and I’ve a still only figured out the ‘Twit’ portion of Twitter.
Then there’s Facebook chat, IM and Skype ….does no one just call people on the telephone anymore?
I guess I understand why not – every time someone calls with big news these days, the standard reaction is an anticlimactic, “yeah, I already read that on your status.”
LOL.
Speaking of, how far do you think we are from speaking in abbreviations altogether? “HS (Hi, Sam!),” HYD (How’re you doing?). OMG, DYHA Alice? (Oh my God did you hear about Alice?).”
The folks at NATO, USAMRIID and the UN would love that – they’ve been speaking in acronyms for decades now, just waiting for the rest of us to catch up.
Seriously, think about it …who doesn’t know what FYI, BTW or OMG means? What scares me is not how many abbreviations I don’t know, it’s how readily I figure most of them out at first glance .. not great news for a writer who often gets paid by the word.
Can’t help but wonder how much this new trend will abbreviate my paycheques.
Anyway, that being neither here nor there, even I, avowed technophobe, am becoming dependent on new technology. I brought my laptop to the doctor’s office to catch up on the news while I waited. And waited. And waited…
Couldn’t get the stupid power cords right, so I couldn’t use the computer or read the day’s headlines, and was so frustrated … until a little girl sitting near me handed me a newspaper from the stack of newspapers on the coffee table.
Oh, right – never thought of doing it that way.
Yikes.
And after days of emailing and texting (my computer spell-check still doesn’t accept ‘texting’ as a proper word, ha ha), I go to write a column or have a conversation and find myself yearning for emoticons (you know, the little yellow faces that smile or frown or whatever) to underscore whatever point I’m making or to make sure my audience knows I’m kidding (LOL).
So I guess I’m going to have to learn to Tweet (not ‘tweak’ … wouldn’t want to confuse those two, insert smiley face here), and Bing, and whatever other new and ridiculously-complicated programming and gadgetry the tech industry comes up with to take my hard-earned money from me.
Which reminds me – did you know you can take pictures and shoot video … from a cell phone?
Do I really have to learn how to do that, too?
Sigh.
