Monday, January 08, 2007

the Internet

I think it came to us too late. Five years maybe, not more, but too late nonetheless. For those of us whose work doesn't rest on absolute Internet proficiency there is no hope. We are the lost generation.

We want to know it, understand it, work with it, benefit from it, but we cannot. We take a step, we feel competent and proficient and then something happens and we feel horribly undermined, discouraged, put down.

It is no mystery by now that I am working on a website. The frame of it is there, finally, after a week of hard labor and great assistance from a person who is able (as opposed to me).

I'm working away at filling things in, linking, writing, endlessly, happily and then I notice one of the pages is completely out of wack. The alignment suddenly looks off. And I cannot fix it. I try, but I am stumped. I call my able person, she asks me to zip it to her (people of my age don't routinely zip and unzip files and so I have to reeducate myself there). It may be that I have to start from scratch. A mess up on the computer can be costly.

I think about this now as I try to navigate and search and insert and adjust and replace. Skills no one ever taught us. Skills that make or break a project.

Inept, behind, without skills. Partially literate, wholly incompetent. My generation. Or at least me.


january 07 035
double latte for a pick me up

4 comments:

  1. Don't be so hard on yourself! Births are always difficult.

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  2. I think that web page design and coding in html is a specialized skill - not necessarily age-related. It used to be (and it is probably still true) that there were Blogger-like templates to make it easy, but it sounds like you are working on something more complex, and are doing the right thing to employ a guru. I'm sure the end result will be wonderful, and we can be patient, knowing that to be the case.

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  3. Nina, it took me years (um, 5!) to get my business website to the point where I'm not embarrassed to show it. Making websites is very, very, very difficult! It's the pros, not necessarily the youth, who make it look easy.

    Hang in there!

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  4. Thanks, all. Come hell or high water, tomorrow.

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