Worst of all was the moment at 11.10pm tonight when the wordpress post I'd been working on for a job failed to save. Not only failed to save but reverted back to its original version. All changes lost.
Are you getting my frustration here? Are the italics doing it justice?
Seriously, it's enough to make a person go back to writing longhand.
I started using computers in my second year of working. True story. I learnt to type on a manual typewriter. And I'm not even that old.
How did we go from that place to a society where half our day is spent not only on the computer but online?
(Again with the italics.)
I am hoping that I will wake up tomorrow and whatever gremlins have decided to infiltrate all the technology will have moved next door to shut down the neighbours' noisy pool filter. Then I will drink a cup of coffee (without steam burns) and start my whole wordpress post over again.
No italics required.
Do you remember a time when work did not necessarily mean a screen? Or is it just me?
Work has always involved a screen for me, but I remember handing in draft after handwritten draft of assignments at school, and even in my first year of uni. And I'm Gen Y!
ReplyDeleteI also remember unplugging the phone to plug the phone line into the large, separate modem, and plugging that into the computer, and doing so approximately fifteen minutes before trying to use the internet.
I have lost blog posts before. Why is it always the good ones? I now have an addiction to the save button which I press every five seconds. I even copy my blog comments in case I lose them before I submit!
ReplyDeleteI remember writing at school, with a pen and paper, really. Do they even do that anymore? Anyway I remember the not so neatly written A4 loosleaf papers that I used to collate for English. All that writing, all that paper, my sore wrist, but I remember feeling so accomplished. 10 pages of paper seems so much more meaningful than two pages on a computer screen. Those were the days....
I love technology but I don't fully trust it. That's why I always write blog posts on Word and save often because I've been punked by blogging platforms so many times before! Plus it makes it easier for me to turn my blogging year into a book (which I've done the last two years).
ReplyDeleteGive me a pen and paper any day! Technology for me is just a necessary evil, but I do wish I was a bit more fluent.
ReplyDeleteMy first job (100 years ago) involved a cash register that you had to push the keys down and it dinged!! No scanners back in the dark ages :)
The screen has won, I'm afraid! But there are so many things I love about it: word counts, the ability to instantly edit and not re-type pages, and yes - I use that SAVE button constantly!
ReplyDeleteI've had a similar experience with Windows Live Writer. I'm now bordering on obsessive with the save button (just to make sure no work is lost). Unfortunately I think we have become too dependent on technology. However, all my working life, I have worked with computers. I do like to occasionally use a notepad to check that I can still write by hand.
ReplyDeleteI can well relate to your frustrating experiences with technology and often feel ambivalent about it, even at times hankering after the old, simpler days. Losing important pages of writing, which for some inexplicable reason don't save is unbelievably stressful (and you were 'steamed' by an temperamental coffee machine on top of that!) Then, when you try to retype lost documents you can never (italics) recapture the exact words. The downside in my job is that there's no escape from students. Where once teachers would just have to mark draft hard copies of essays, now students email you 24/7(leading up to the HSC is shocking!)Technology's good, but sometimes it's so bad!
ReplyDeleteAhhhh, dear dear paper and pen. I love paper and writing on paper and filling notebooks. I still don't trust the notes on my phone/computer to stay there. At least a notebook will hang around. If we don't write on paper anymore, what are our children going to giggle at in years to come? Printed photos and written recipes or our Pinterest boards. I can see it now, 'Check out Grandma's Pinterest board from 2013, it is so old fashioned' will be the cry from kids in the future. Unless of course it has been lost in updates and new gizmos.
ReplyDeleteBlimey I sound like a ranting old lady!! What I meant to say was, yes, I like paper but I also spend most of my time with a screen (big, small or medium sized) in my vicinity.
I recall my Dad's new counting machine being introduced into his office. An electric plug in calculator not less.
ReplyDeleteI too learned how to touch type on a type writer. (I was forced into it. I had too many spare periods on my year 11 timetable - the teachers were (rightly) scared I would muck up, so they made me fill my week with typing. I am actually grateful, now!)
I can remember my older brother getting all excited about "the internet" back in about 1995 and I groaned with boredom, and handed him a pencil and a library card, telling him they were everlasting internet devices.
And now I work for an organisation where the chairman does not have a computer or email. I have to type him a memo and leave it on his desk when I want to 'communicate electronically' with him.
Oh, dear lord.