When I began dashing off my thoughts for publication in 14850 (and holding the publisher hostage until he agreed to print my article - just kidding!), I used rustic techniques. No easy cut/paste edit for me! Only pen and paper would do. It was like those people who take to the woods with a knife and a piece of string and live there for a couple of weeks eating nothing but roots and maybe the occasional Tic-Tac that turns up in a flannel pocket. Sure, these guys could lay down a couple thousand bucks at L.L. Bean and camp out in style, but, hell, that's for sissies. In other words, there's a point to prove.
It wasn't that I didn't own or know how to use a computer. I had a major chip on my shoulder and it was probably related to that "D" I got in fourth-grade penmanship (I'm still ashamed!). Anyway, I had a ton of excuses and reasons, but they all boiled down to one thing: I used such archaic methods mainly because I could and I possessed a need to prove that it mattered.
I never had a computer growing up. Maine has never been noted for being particularly savvy about technology. Besides, everybody's so damn poor. Oh yeah, there were a few computers at school, but you didn't HAVE to use them and nobody was going to force anyone (especially a girl) to learn how to use one. Besides, it was considered a kind of geeky thing to do anyway. I learned to write beautiful longhand and with this beautiful script and a superfluity of big words I got A's on every paper.
I was never attracted to computers, but I was for some reason attracted to computer geeks. All my boyfriends in high school loved computers. These guys fascinated me. I thought they were so smart. Some of them were kinda cute, too. Anything I learned about computers in high school I learned in order to "get next to" computer guys. Thank God for sexual urges, or I might never have become computer literate!
Still, I never chose to use the machine unless it was an absolute requirement. I used them at work and I knew how to search an on-line library catalogue, but I still wrote every correspondence, every grocery list and every paper or article by hand. Often, I typed the handwritten document into the computer after the fact (with much assistance from whatever tech-head lover or husband was around at the time), but basically, I believed myself unable to "create" if the words didn't reflect the "energy of my soul". I honestly believed the magic would not happen if I typed the thing from the get go. My husband and all of our computer-user friends gently let this silly superstition slide. My computer ignorance is a running joke in our circle (for example: I thought MS DOS was "Miz" Dos like "Miz Pacman"). Thank God for friends who happen to not be prejudiced against the terminally ridiculous!
Then one night, it happened. I drank a pot of coffee and typed an article about it from beginning to end on our ancient Mac+. I was pleased with the results and decided that maybe I hadn't given word processing it's due. It was a small step, but that was the night I lost my fear of the machine. I still viewed the thing as not much more than a typewriter, and I still didn't understand the compu-babble frequently spoken at my parties. I did, however, listen with slightly more inclined ears. What I kept hearing was that I needed a modem so I could find out "what it was all about". The Internet sounded like a good idea, but I couldn't see buying a bunch of expensive equipment just so I could leave myself open to the government and other assorted nuts.
I landed a job working for the Ithaca City Schools and no longer had much time to think about cool articles, computer-written or otherwise. At work, I wrote everything long-hand: lesson plans, notes, schedules. I didn't think much about it until the day last spring when my husband called me from a Compaq sales-training session and related the news that he had won an Elite notebook with active-matrix color screen. I didn't understand what that meant exactly (except for the word "won" which translated as "free") but it sure was pretty when he brought it home! He made the mistake of showing me how to play solitaire. Wow! With the colors, computing was almost like watching T.V.! I was so impressed that I quickly commandeered the thing. I still had no time to think about articles, but I wrote much of my schoolwork on it and I played a boatload o' solitaire.
What happened next was, in my evolution, nothing less than mind-blowing: while I was out of town, my husband secured a modem with the proper software and set up an Internet account with Lightlink. We had talked about it for months, but never thought it would really happen. By this point, I was curious about the Net, but mostly so I could see what all the fuss was about. I didn't expect it to impress me in the least.
When I returned to town, my husband sat me down, showed me what to do and let me go. That was the night I became a Net Junkie. That was the night I realized what all my computer geek friends had been saying all those months. That was the night I stopped being such a Neo-Luddite and embraced technology with open arms. In short, it was nothing less than a complete conversion.
What cemented this conversion was the death of Jerry Garcia. I went on-line for the first time on August 7, 1995. Among the first sites I searched for on the Net were Grateful Dead sites and when I heard the news of Jerry's passing at noon on August 9, I returned to some of those places. What I found was a place to mourn and talk to others about Jerry. It was comforting to read the posts from others around the world who were as deeply affected by this event as I was. It occurred to me then that the Net isn't just about strangers pandering their wares and/or promoting their viewpoints. It is also about bringing people together who might never meet in any other fashion.
I have come to believe in the concept of virtual community. While it will never replace real life (after all, Netscape will never be able to download an Ithaca sunset like the Almighty can), I do believe that interactions in "cyberspace" hold their own intrinsic validity. While most people I know personally have never heard of Harlan Ellison (who, as I opined in my first 14850 article, is the greatest writer in the world), by typing a few letters, numbers and sundry other symbols I can go to Ellison Webderland where EVERYONE knows Harlan! I can find those who share my interests in pretty much any area from mental health to music education to Steely Dan. If we met in real life, we might have little in common, but by the glow of Netscape it's possible for us to engage in civil, human communication. To me, this can only strengthen existing bonds of real community.
I hear increased rumblings in Congress about the dangers of the Internet. What I fear is that the politicians who are loudest in their quest to regulate the Net are, at best, poorly informed about what exactly is going on "out there". They're like people who think that the only reason people go to Grateful Dead concerts is to get as fucked up on drugs as is humanly possible. Those people just don't "get it". The politicians who portray the Net as a mere venue for slobbering pedophiles and porn peddlers just don't "get it". It's simply the old censorship story in new trendy packaging.
Still don't understand what all the fuss is about? Return to the Dead analogy: the first step to "getting it" is to go see a show. I believe it's much the same with the Internet: you've got to GET ON to "get it". What are you waiting for?
Outquote:
I went on-line for the first time on August 7, 1995. Among the first sites I searched for on the Net were Grateful Dead sites and when I heard the news of Jerry's passing at noon on August 9, I returned to some of those places. What I found was a place to mourn and talk to others about Jerry.
(Lauri Keegan is a woman of many hats. Mortarboard, hipster bop lid or mamma's babushka all suit her just fine.)