Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Now is the Autumn of My DisContent

After deciding that I was not egocentric enough to blog habitually, I am drawn back to it in order to rant. Rant about computers and the like. My father died in November of 1999 and although he had been very comfortable with technology previously he was happy to sign off before Y2K. During the last months of his life he spoke about how technology was getting in the way of living. Tonight I couldn't agree with him more.

Laura, my daughter innocently approached me about printing photos for a geometry assignment. Now I have a new PC running Vista with a lot of preloaded software, including sales pitches from software vendors I have no interest in. Who knows what happened but it was no less than three hours after I began that I finally succeeded in printing said photos. In between the new PC refused to recognize my camera and demanded a driver that I did not have. I then tried printing directly from camera to fancy schmancy printer/scanner/copier/fax machine only to have it choke. Not to be deterred I took the camera to Laura's PC and downloaded the photos, then pulled out a thumb drive and tried to copy them onto it. The trial version of Corel said it was no longer valid (I didn't know I even had it) but I managed to get the photos on to it anyway. When I went back to my flashy new Vaio it refused to read the thumb drive and subseqently lost track of every USB device I had. Thumb drive directly in printer/scanner/copier/fax machine resulted in an error. Finally, frustrated MAB went back to Laura's machine, which by now had mysteriously lost all connectivity with the outside world. After rebooting it, I uploaded the photos to Flickr and then went back to said Sony and downloaded them and printed them. Did you follow all of that? Did I mention here that I am supposed to be comfortable with computers?!

3 comments:

Le Vieux said...

I've often been through similar scenarios, and, as a person who reached adulthood before all of this stuff was around, I often wonder about whether the net effect has been good or bad. What nudges me to the "good" column is the memory of producing a doctoral dissertation before microcomputers. But still I waver: when scholars look at the literature of our present day, they will look in vain for manuscripts, first and second drafts, marginal notes, scratched out phrases that, in the past, have often unlocked a writer's secrets. Sigh.

Mary Alice Ball said...

I agree, John. In my intellectual freedom seminar I always speak fondly of using the library at a time when I could look at the cards in the back of the book to see who was reading the same things. Remember the orange Bobbs-Merrill biography series? I loved those books and was able to share recommendations with friends who liked them, too, or even to make new friends. In an electronic age, when we are concerned about privacy, and rightfully so, this cannot happen. Sigh. Sigh.

Nina said...

Hi, Mary Alice,

I'm now using a free program called Picasa. It will let me email pix and also can send them to Walgreens, where I can pick up a print soon after. And I don't have to be a tech guru. (Actually, I'm so un-techy that I don't understand your troubles, so I don't know if this is a useful comment...)

Nina R