The Internet is Not a Fad

When my brother and sisters and I were young we desperately wanted a color TV. We watched our favorite shows—The Wonderful World of Disney, Batman, Speed Racer, Loonie Toons—on a big clunky black-and-white hand-me-down of my grandfather's—while everyone else on our block saw them in living technicolor. My father said color TV was a fad.

Imagine my horror when I realized that I'd become my father (gasp)! I'd kind of thought the internet was a fad. Don’t get me wrong, I'm not a complete web-phobe. I google, shop and email, I work on computers all day, even design web sites. What I mean is that I didn't iM or Flickr or MyFace or YourSpace or a gazillion other internet things that everybody under 35 does as easily as drink water.

This winter I decided to try all this stuff out—with an open mind if at all possible. In case you're considering a similar metamorphosis, the first thing you need to do is buy a little black book for all your passwords. Before I did this (yes I realize you shouldn't keep all your passwords in once place in case a web-savvy burgler gets it and pretends to be you, but WHO CAN REMEMBER THEM ALL!), I had zillions of little pieces of paper that I had to search through before finding (always last) the one I was looking for. Often, I had to click the "Forgot my password" link and wait for the computer gods to remind me. Now, I smile, full of myself, when I get out my little black address book with all my passwords neatly arranged in alphabetical order.

The first thing I got going was this blog, which is actually fun and I'm enjoying. Many of you asked me how to set up a blog. I felt very superior. I thought I was alone in my ignorance, but apparently I'm not the last one to the dance. Truth is, setting up this blog took me about 5 minutes; no joke. Go to blogger.com and sign yourself up; it's free. Customizing the look and set up is not quite as easy, but still manageable. I designed mine to complement my web site.

As a photographer, I'm a little embarrassed about not having used a (free!) photo site where you can upload photos for people to view at their leisure. I cannot tell you how much time I've spent burning cds for people. Here's how you do it. You go to Flickr.com (or to any number of competitors) and you get a yahoo! Id and password (of course). Then you can upload up to 125 Mb of images at a time-FREE. Save it with a title like "Little League 2008" and then send out an email inviting people to view them. To protect privacy, you can limit viewers to be invitation-only. I love this whole thing. It’s already saved me oodles of time.

The im (instant message) thing I'm still struggling with. Maybe it's because I couldn't get a good display name—you need one of those in addition to a password. Or maybe I just haven't found the right use for it. I still like the telephone. [On a side note, I heard an NPR interview with a man who proved that Bell did not invent the phone! Next they’ll be saying Al Gore didn’t invent the internet.]

Second life really eludes me. The flying avatar thing is kind of cool, but past that, who has time for a second life? I struggle on a daily basis with the real one I'm living.

In reading about how to maximize your google rank (check out my blog entry about redoing my web site), I learned that signing up with one of these community sites is a good idea. I created a page (is this correct vernacular?) on artscuttlebutt.com which is managed by Art Calendar magazine. It's actually been fun, though I've made a few blunders. A couple of people have asked to be my "friend" but I haven't figured out how to say "yes" so they probably think I'm a snob. The great thing is you don't have to surf around the site to find people. If you just sit back, people write to you and then you can check out their work and go from there. It kind of creeped me out the first time I saw my photo pop up on the listed of visitors as soon as I visited an artist’s page. Maybe that’s why people pretend to be someone else online; maybe I should use an alias—one-eyed jack, or moon-shooter, or something.

A real cool thing is that you can design your own home browser page on iGoogle. Go to google.com/ig and they’ll suggest a few categories. Click the ones you’re interested in and boom, you’ve customized your interface with the internet universe. Don’t like the default options? No problem, simply click the “Add stuff” or “Add a tab” buttons and you can choose from thousands of options. Add pac man, a news feed from India, a whole section on cooking or photography. I’ve got Yogi Berra quotes on my home page (“If you see a fork in the road, take it.”), inspirational photos and quotes, a wikipedia search box, internet slang translator (critical for web neophytes like me), Spanish word of the day and regular stuff like the weather in my neighborhood, the date, and news headlines. Of course, a google password is required, but completely worth it.

I haven’t completed my experiments yet, but I have definitely decided that the internet is here to stay, and some of it is—well—pretty darn useful. Some stuff can suck all your free time like a giant toilet flush though, so be careful. Go out and buy that password book and I’ll see you out there.