CREEK ROAD GANG
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Thoughts from the Editor:
November 2010
copyright 2010
Would life be better without the computer?
A strange thought from the editor of an online magazine perhaps, but I’ve never claimed that my thoughts aren’t strange.
I swear sometimes my computer acts like an over-involved parent. It reminds me to check off items on a to-do list, suggests things I should read, emails I should open, news I should keep up with. It even hints to me that my social life is not what it should be.
Does this happen to everyone?
My computer reminds me that I've lost touch with dozens of people from my past, many of whom I didn't even get to know well when it would have been pretty easy to do so in person. At least once a week, it suggests that I might want to look at pictures or view notes posted by someone who went to the same elementary school, high school, college or grad school I attended. It suggests I try out quizzes that my fellow alums have taken so I'll know where I stand in relation to them. Just the other morning, without my even taking a quiz, it informed me that my first name is in the top 0.7 percent of common first names in the United States. (And what am I to do with that information? I don't know.)
My computer encourages me to post messages so that my friends in cyberspace will know what I'm up to. It questions why I haven't been posting pictures, and it often acts disappointed that I don't comment more on what others are putting forward. Overall, it seems to find me insufficiently forthcoming.
Mind you, I'm not saying that I'm always right and it's always wrong.
Last winter, for instance, it asked me to look for names I might know from a list of high school graduates in the city from which we moved when I was 11. I had lost track of all those kids I was friends with back before the move: the girl whose family invited me to stay for dinner, and it turned out they were having pork chops, my least favorite meal, but I choked down two of them in order to look polite; the four girls I had invited to my doll tea party; the girl I did homework with, who irritated my mother by making three syllables out of my first name; the girl who broke her leg the summer before we moved. What happened to them? We lost touch, and I didn’t know.
I obligingly followed the links to find the list, because I can be as curious as anyone. But when I finally had before me the computer's promised list of graduates, I saw it was from a different school than I would have attended had my family stayed put, and almost all the names were of boys. Still, someone I knew could have transferred. I eagerly looked, hoping I'd find the boy from my fifth grade class who had shouted out my last name in the 5 & 10 and waved at me before he jumped onto the banister railing and slid down to the bargain basement. Had it been true love? I wasn't to know. He hadn’t clarified matters before I moved, and he wasn't on the computer’s list.
But instead, I found the name of a boy who had lived next door to us. Was this the same kid I sometimes walked to school with, even though he was three years older than me? The one who soared into his teen years, leaving me in my little kid dust, even before we moved away? I carefully followed the breadcrumbs my computer had left for me, and found my way to his website, full of pictures and links and information. Whoa! It was the same kid, that same face, looking a little older, but not much, and anyway, who am I to talk? I don't look like I'm 11 anymore.
Without waiting for computer prompting, I emailed him. My computer, which is big on demands but small on praise, didn't say a word. Since then, he and I have caught up with each other online. I renewed a friendship, and got back a little chunk of my early years.
But was my computer satisfied?
On the contrary, it’s begun to think that it might be able to make something of me after all; or at least that’s how I see its continuing demands.
When will I upload a photograph album? Won't I check out (again!) the names of people I went to college with? What about work places? Where exactly did I work those years I haven't accounted for? Don't I realize there are scores of people wanting to get in touch with me?
Yeah, sure. The computer talks a good game, but it doesn't tell the whole story. How come I have to do all the work? If all those people want to get in touch, why don't their computers make them write to me?
~Kate Lydon
A strange thought from the editor of an online magazine perhaps, but I’ve never claimed that my thoughts aren’t strange.
I swear sometimes my computer acts like an over-involved parent. It reminds me to check off items on a to-do list, suggests things I should read, emails I should open, news I should keep up with. It even hints to me that my social life is not what it should be.
Does this happen to everyone?
My computer reminds me that I've lost touch with dozens of people from my past, many of whom I didn't even get to know well when it would have been pretty easy to do so in person. At least once a week, it suggests that I might want to look at pictures or view notes posted by someone who went to the same elementary school, high school, college or grad school I attended. It suggests I try out quizzes that my fellow alums have taken so I'll know where I stand in relation to them. Just the other morning, without my even taking a quiz, it informed me that my first name is in the top 0.7 percent of common first names in the United States. (And what am I to do with that information? I don't know.)
My computer encourages me to post messages so that my friends in cyberspace will know what I'm up to. It questions why I haven't been posting pictures, and it often acts disappointed that I don't comment more on what others are putting forward. Overall, it seems to find me insufficiently forthcoming.
Mind you, I'm not saying that I'm always right and it's always wrong.
Last winter, for instance, it asked me to look for names I might know from a list of high school graduates in the city from which we moved when I was 11. I had lost track of all those kids I was friends with back before the move: the girl whose family invited me to stay for dinner, and it turned out they were having pork chops, my least favorite meal, but I choked down two of them in order to look polite; the four girls I had invited to my doll tea party; the girl I did homework with, who irritated my mother by making three syllables out of my first name; the girl who broke her leg the summer before we moved. What happened to them? We lost touch, and I didn’t know.
I obligingly followed the links to find the list, because I can be as curious as anyone. But when I finally had before me the computer's promised list of graduates, I saw it was from a different school than I would have attended had my family stayed put, and almost all the names were of boys. Still, someone I knew could have transferred. I eagerly looked, hoping I'd find the boy from my fifth grade class who had shouted out my last name in the 5 & 10 and waved at me before he jumped onto the banister railing and slid down to the bargain basement. Had it been true love? I wasn't to know. He hadn’t clarified matters before I moved, and he wasn't on the computer’s list.
But instead, I found the name of a boy who had lived next door to us. Was this the same kid I sometimes walked to school with, even though he was three years older than me? The one who soared into his teen years, leaving me in my little kid dust, even before we moved away? I carefully followed the breadcrumbs my computer had left for me, and found my way to his website, full of pictures and links and information. Whoa! It was the same kid, that same face, looking a little older, but not much, and anyway, who am I to talk? I don't look like I'm 11 anymore.
Without waiting for computer prompting, I emailed him. My computer, which is big on demands but small on praise, didn't say a word. Since then, he and I have caught up with each other online. I renewed a friendship, and got back a little chunk of my early years.
But was my computer satisfied?
On the contrary, it’s begun to think that it might be able to make something of me after all; or at least that’s how I see its continuing demands.
When will I upload a photograph album? Won't I check out (again!) the names of people I went to college with? What about work places? Where exactly did I work those years I haven't accounted for? Don't I realize there are scores of people wanting to get in touch with me?
Yeah, sure. The computer talks a good game, but it doesn't tell the whole story. How come I have to do all the work? If all those people want to get in touch, why don't their computers make them write to me?
~Kate Lydon
