Love and understanding really are different things. Consider for instance what most men feel for their women. Love her he sure does, but understand her.. now that's a struggle. And that's quite how I feel for technology. I love technology.. I love the things it can do, the value it adds to my life, the happiness it brings... yet it's ways remain a mystery. Fascinating, delightful and completely mysterious... that's what technology is to me.
Each time I take a tiny step and manage to unravel a bit of it, a miracle unfolds.
A few days back by a happy accident I managed to plug in my pen drive to my television. (Oh alright.. The Husband did it after I'd had my fill of struggle). However, much as I fought, I couldn't open the music files I wanted to. Frustrated, I dumped the remote on the sofa where the kids were engaged in a lively scuffle. As one of them landed bang on the remote a menu flashed on the screen. I grabbed it, tuned in and then boom.. I had all my favourite tracks playing away happily.When it comes to technology I have always found myself struggling. There was the time when my Walkman refused to play. I took it to the repair shop only to find the batteries were upside down. That would have been dismissed as an oversight if I hadn't done it two times in a row. Hit and trial worked a long time for me till my smart sibling told me there was a plus and a minus that one was supposed to watch out for. I still sometimes wonder, though, why the signs must be hidden deep down inside.
Then there are cellphones. Each time I get a new one (which is pretty frequent what with the kids around) I have a fight on hand. When my trusted Nokia gave way a few months back, The Husband decided to upgrade me to a BlackBerry. What a pain that was, still is. The kids must have made umpteen calls to my friend 'Aditi' (because she was the first on the contact list) till the same smart sibling got herself a BB and told me how to lock the keypad. Oh now don't tell me to read the manual.. it's full of complicated diagrams and arrows with heavy jargon thrown in for good measure.
Isn't it a wonder then that I've been on Blogger for so long? I've laboured around plenty in the dark world of backlinks and permalinks, labels, gadgets, templates.... Once I happened to click on the 'Edit HTML' option and then wondered for days where my editing menu had gone. I idly posted the query on Google Help and lo and behold I got an almost immediate reply. Someone actually figured out my error. Unbelievable, isn't it? I never thought there were people sitting there waiting to help you out. Then there was the time I deleted a post and reposted it. At least two of my blogger friends knew I did that through some tracking system. Pretty unnerving to say the least. It's like there are people sitting in my computer watching every thing I do.
By the way, in case I've given the impression of being computer illiterate let me clarify I'm not. I've been working on computers for over two and a half decades. Along with my editorial tasks at the newspaper I designed pages too and managed a fairly decent job. In fact I was better than most others, baring the designers of course. But put me on MSWord 2007 and I'm lost. The problem is with the new stuff.. and where there's technology there's always new stuff around.
Cookies, plugins, HTML, Java Script.. It's like Greek and Latin. Sometimes I think I should seriously learn computers but which is the course I should be looking at???