Back in 1982, when I started\u00a0writing seriously, I got a computer called a Commodore. The screen was green\u00a0with yellow flashing letters and the manual was indecipherable. None of my\u00a0friends had computers back then, but I knew one nerd who I thought might be
able to help. I called him, he sat down at my keyboard, took a look what I was\u00a0trying to understand and said, \u201cThey made a mistake in the manual.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
I felt redeemed. I laughed. The\u00a0whole thing felt comical to me as I carried on battling the Commodore \u2013 until I\u00a0got an Apple 512K that felt like heaven. At the time, I could never have\u00a0imagined iPads, iPhones and iWatches you hold up to your face like a secret\u00a0service agent talking into his sleeve. The thing is that if you didn’t get a side
of iPhone with your baby food, you better learn to be patient and have a good laugh\u00a0at yourself instead of beating yourself down.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m a member of the in-between\u00a0generation, the baby boomers born who weren\u2019t born with an iPhone in our hands.\u00a0When we were young and we were expecting a call, we waited beside a dialup, corded telephone. When couples broke up, we didn’t do it in a text. We got up\u00a0to change the TV channel or to turn it on and off. We didn\u2019t get calls when\u00a0were walking, driving, eating out or flying somewhere. It was less hectic but\u00a0things have changed and we have to keep up in order to do business, get paid,\u00a0or order something online. And we have to view our awkward attempts like we\u2019re\u00a0learning a new language. You don’t speak French because you\u2019re in Paris. You
have to study it, make silly mistakes, laugh at yourself and eventually you\u00a0become fluent.<\/p>\n
When I think back, I was filled\u00a0with wonder as I watched the technology magically transform at lightning speed,\u00a0but I felt stupid when I had to ask an eight-year-old how to download an App. \u201cJust
plug it in,\u201d they tell me. \u201cEven a child can do it.\u201d They should have said,\u00a0\u201cOnly a child can do it.\u201d I swallowed my embarrassment and tried. I Googled it,\u00a0and when I was directed to double click on \u201cschedule,\u201d I would have been glad\u00a0to do it \u2013 if I could find a link called \u201cSchedule.\u201d It felt like I was in a\u00a0dark room, my hand was on the light switch but the button wouldn\u2019t budge. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Whenever I get a new device and I\u00a0have to pair it, configure it or learn how to program it, I get anxious. Asking\u00a0for help is reasonable in some instances, but there are times I could do it\u00a0myself if I tried. I just don\u2019t want to. When computers started taking over the\u00a0world, I had a friend my age and technology was in his blood. He was born that\u00a0way. I texted him constantly to ask him what to do and how to do it, until one\u00a0day, he sent me a terse message. RTFM. I asked him what it meant.<\/p>\n
\u201cRead The Fucking Manual. You can\u00a0do it yourself if you don\u2019t get all worked up.\u201d<\/p>\n
It stung but he was right. When I had\u00a0a tech problem, my breathing got shallow and it felt like I was in a maze. But if\u00a0I slowed down and took a deep breath, I was perfectly capable of following the\u00a0manual (if it was written correctly.) Granted, there are things we absolutely need\u00a0help with but even when we\u2019re working with a tech genius, we have to listen and\u00a0follow directions without our hearts beating out of our chests. Then we can see\u00a0the icon he\u2019s directing us to find or the file that lives in the drop down menu.<\/p>\n
Yesterday I had an SSD chip\u00a0installed in my desktop iMac (don’t even ask), and when I tried to open my\u00a0files, a box came up that said I didn’t have access. Heat flew through my body,\u00a0my heart sped up, and I began to fantasize never being able to find any of my writings.\u00a0No Apps. No blogs. No photos. I took a moment to get the desperation out of my\u00a0voice and I called the tech who had installed the chip. We went back and forth,\u00a0he had me try a few things and my job was to breathe, listen to what he said\u00a0and do it without panicking. I didn\u2019t ask a hundred questions. I didn’t jump\u00a0ahead. I just followed his instructions and after about fifteen minutes, it was\u00a0sorted out and I was up and running.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know why tech problems feel\u00a0like the end of the world but I expect it has to do with being out of control\u00a0and judging myself for being stupid. I\u2019m not. I\u2019m just uninformed and\u00a0intimidated. As I explained in the beginning of this blog, I wasn\u2019t born in a\u00a0sea of technology and I wasn\u2019t clutching an iPad when my mother pushed me\u00a0around in my stroller.<\/p>\n
Now that I\u2019m current (somewhat)\u00a0with the twenty-first century, I tap my credit card in grocery stores. I use a\u00a0bar code to read a restaurant menu. I\u2019ve stopped writing checks because I use
auto pay, Venmo and Papal. What the hell is \u201cZelle?\u201d I wanted to know. I\u2019ve\u00a0joined the masses who feel like we\u2019re missing a limb if we leave our iPhones at\u00a0home. How will we count our steps, see who’s ringing the doorbell, get our\u00a0texts or turn on the heat or the A\/C before we get home?<\/p>\n
We\u2019re in the digital age, we can\u2019t\u00a0avoid it and it isn\u2019t going away so we might as well laugh at our awkward\u00a0attempts and exercise our brains so we don\u2019t get \u201cold\u201d and stuck in a web of\u00a0confusion. Let\u2019s get with it and save trees by reading on a Kindle, checking\u00a0\u201cWaze\u201d when we get lost and listening to podcasts with strange white gadgets sticking out of our ears. If that isn\u2019t worth a laugh, I don’t know what is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Back in 1982, when I started\u00a0writing seriously, I got a computer called a Commodore. The screen was green\u00a0with yellow flashing letters and the manual was indecipherable. None of my\u00a0friends had computers back then, but I knew one nerd who I thought might beable to help. I called him, he sat down at my keyboard, took […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2323,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2324"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2325,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2324\/revisions\/2325"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}