Old Guys Navigating the Digital World

To give you some perspective of people in their ’60s-’70s in this day and age: we grew up, graduated from college, married, had kids, and worked at a job for over 20 years before we even heard of computers. I developed skills in producing a book for press in what’s now called “the old way.” I won’t bore you with details, but it was a well worked-out process that could produce high-quality results. AND then along came computers and all those hand-done hand-made methods of book production have become obsolete. We’ve had to learn a completely new craft. In this regard I’ve been lucky: since book production is now on the computer, I get to watch our Mac maestro Rick work his magic. He’s light years ahead of me and and I continually watch what he does, ask questions, find out new ways to do things, cool software, up-to-date hardware, a steady flow of tips and tricks I’d otherwise never know. In this sense I’m way ahead of most of my contemporaries (Lowell, S. F. high school Class of ’52). I can do basic work in QuarkXpress and Photoshop, have got my cameras pretty well coordinated with the office Mac G-5, I’m sailing along on the web (in Firefox). I can’t believe how I can access information. A few days ago (see earlier blog re chickens) I wanted to know how much an elephant weighed. Zing! 13,000 lbs. And etc. If you’re of the shall we say post-baby-boom generation, I’d recommend getting much and frequent help from younger computer geniuses. Things are moving (and improving) fast, and an hour tutorial once a week will produce marvelous dividends.