Sunday, July 13, 2008

• Will you be my friend?

  I'm not very good at things technological. If something confuses me, I want a 5x8 manual for assistance. I am very tactile. I like to touch things - books, magazines, friends, feet, my kids, my dog, other people's dogs, rough things, squishy things, shiny things... you get the picture.

  Technology is so untouchable. A keyboard and screen are so impersonal. I've yet to see a user's manual for a website. I learned from my dad or the Reader's Digest Fix It manual how to attempt small repairs, (which were infrequent, due to most repairs being major) on my '66 Mustang. British Racing Green, thanks for asking. Talk about tactile! I loved putting the hood up on the side of the road & fishing around inside with a rudimentary knowledge of what I was looking at. So now, it frustrates me that virtual worlds are not tactile: I need the sensory engagement to make an experience complete, to fully understand, and that's not often afforded to me.

  And just in case the above mention of my cool car may cause you to become confused and forget what a big geek I am, I want to use this opportunity to explain that I decided I wanted my own card catalog while working in the high school library during study hall. Right before German class. So even though I avoid social networking sites, I was lured in by the "card catalogy-ness" of  Goodreads.  I joined Goodreads because I could be satisfied with a virtual card catalog. And it offered the added bonus of allowing me to be a voyeur into my friends' card catalogs.

  So, techno-stupid as I am, earlier this week when Goodreads asked me if I wanted to send a "friends invite" to a list of 7 people, I unchecked 4 names & clicked "send".  That's what I thought I did, but instead what I thought was being sent to three people was sent to my entire Gmail contacts list. Oops. Sorry amazingly wonderful missionary man who got the invite in Beirut. Sorry old therapist who I no longer go to. Sorry friends I haven't written a personal email to in a year. And the coup de gras - Sorry friend's ex-boyfriend who has fallen off the map.

  Technological difficulties getting me into interpersonal baffles - my two nemeses intersect.

   

  Currently Listening Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots By The Flaming Lips see related

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