A little about myself

I am learning new things about the people I work with. Taken from that point of view this work related exercise has an additional value. We are investigating various web 2.0 applications to familiarise ourselves with the tools our users play with. Web 2.0 is essentially a great big electronic sandbox and time waster extraordinaire – and this is no bad thing.

I’ve had my own design related blog now for a few years and I’ve been using the web long before the first browser came along (and wasn’t that a fantastic innovation – oh my yes!) My first modem was an acoustic coupler that you put over your phone handpiece. It ran at 300 bytes a second or some such unimaginably slow speed that if you wanted to download a picture you started the download before you retired for the night and hoped that there was not too much noise on your phone line else the line would drop out and you would have to begin again the following day.

No Google or Yahoo back then either – a search of the net took days not seconds. Surprising then that I now fret about how slow my “broadband” connection is. I am glad to have been born in a time when computers and the Internet are so much part of our world.

I can imagine a world like the one that departed visionary science fiction writer John Brunner imagined in his prophetic Shockwave Rider, first published in 1975. A world where we are all connected to an incredibly comprehensive worldwide network of computers and databases. Unlike John Brunner though, my world would be a lot more benign – yes, yes, I know I’m living in cloud cuckoo land one in which Big Brother doesn’t watch our every transaction, and scammers don’t ply you with copious unwanted email and malicious spam and viruses aren’t part of the daily routine. Humour me; I’m a half full sort of person at heart.

Web 2.0 has brought a new dimension which we largely take for granted today. Working in the field of academic libraries has meant adapting to enormous and continual change. Web 2.0 is one of the more welcome ones as far as I’m concerned – couldn’t happen fast enough in fact.

Since there are only a limited number of hours in each day I am very picky about how and where I spend my allocation – you can bet there will be a computer involved – for sure, and the internet – is a certainty. I’m interested in so many different things and want to try everything that I’ve no time for twittering or flickring or any of the applications for those with short attention spans out there.

But I’m told “that’s where your users are – join them or perish.” Well I know for a fact that many of these web 2.0 applications are designed to be of interest to teenagers so it’s a little difficult trying to establish an interest in something that it not aimed at me. Still I guess for those people for whom the net is still a mystery and those taking their first steps into web 2.0 – have fun, there is always something of value to learn.

I remember in the mid 70′s a friend had assembled his own computer and despite the fact that it was prohibitively expensive and you had to first write a program before it would do anything at all – I knew that I was going to have one.

Now of course I earn a wage by using one, use one in my design and web business, use one at the Academy where I attend classes and finally I use a computer to writes blogs, read newsgroups, do my email, download software, music, books and video, buy stuff (just purchased a new car), research stuff and play games – I’m particularly fond of Mahjong.

I’m a cat person without a cat – because I currently live in a rented abode. I drive an ancient Ford Capri convertible – I just upgraded from a 1989 model to a 1990 one. I’m an adult student studying graphic design with a bunch of people who are mainly under 20. It makes for interesting conversations and is a wakeup call for me everytime we have a class together – everything is new again for these students.

So I’m in it for the long haul and will endevour to finish the 23 things program. This blog is much too wordy – maybe I’ll put some drawings I’ve done to break it up a little.

23things : Week 2: Start a blog

This should earn me an elephant stamp.