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.



double latte for a pick me up