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Heart to Heart


A Different World

San Diego Jewish Times, June 30, 2006                                                       .

By Gert Thaler

          It may come as something of a surprise to “the people who know everything” that there are an even larger number of “know nots.”

          It’s a new world, whoever “they” are, tell me. “Get with it,” they say. “Join the club, otherwise you’ll be left on the sidelines.”

          They (those same characters again) have a language all their own. It looks like English, it smells like English but it is as far away from the same words I was taught in school.

          It all has to do with living in the world of the keyboard, a screen, a printer, scanner and fax all in one while at the same time my right hand holds onto the body of a mouse. The only two words I understood in the beginning phase were the keyboard and the screen. It looked like the keyboard on my typewriter, which I used in the dark ages of communication, except that it has a lot more keys on the right side as well as on the upper parts.

          I learned, and not easily, a lot of the basics. I remember someone trying to teach me about “folders and storing information in them,” which, to this day, I have absolutely no memory of what that was. Lots of words simply disappeared because I failed to save the material and I would have to start all over again.

          I can only barely recall having to tear off perforated slits of paper on the side of printed copy. And I failed for years to learn the value of what “edit, view, insert and tools” meant. (I can hear the wise guys laughing out loud.)

          Well, laugh no more. Having struggled through the pages of Computer for Dummies, I began to emerge from the fog. I took a few classes, and one of the best was working with Norman Mann as he showed his great patience with me during our sessions at the JCC. Some of what he taught has stuck with me, amazingly.

          Words come out on these pages through the wizardry of my recently acquired Dell equipment. If you know little or nothing about such an operation and you were looking over my shoulder, you would think I was amazing as I zip out this column. Sending a fax or scanning material is faster than eating a bag of movie popcorn. I use SKYPE, the free around-the-world phone connection through my computer screen with a microphone on my desk, which allows me to talk to friends in Israel, Australia and England almost every day. With no time limits.

          Only last week SKYPE came out with a new system allowing users to phone anyone, any place in the world, whether or not that person also had SKYPE. As a trial they allowed me to use it free for an hour of conversation, so I dialed phones in Australia, Israel and England, and sure enough it worked. However, to continue the service there will be cheap charges for the calls beginning at 3 cents per minute for selected countries.

          So I feel quite secure, actually smug, in being able to get with it in today’s computer world.

          It didn’t take long for my world to encounter tzores.

          Computer English got in the way again. Something called “Google” suddenly reared its ugly head, and not wishing to show ignorance I refused to ask anyone what it was or how I could get on its wagon.

          Not content to confuse me only a little, without warning “blog” shows up, which I have yet to decipher.

          I even failed to hitch my star to whatever “surfing the net” means.

          I’m the woman who knows the name of nearly every restaurant in town, as well as the one who never uses a road map in San Diego since I can pretty well figure out even the newest of streets, and I have just made the best of the best vanilla ice cream with my own two hands (eggs, cream, sugar, vanilla and more cream). There are probably other women who can claim fame to one of those three attributes, but all three?

          How many times I got to the end of one of these columns, forgetting to push the “save as” key midway into the words and as I finished the screen turned blank, with all the data going to never-never land. That doesn’t happen anymore since I learned by bitter experience the value of that “save” key.

          Who invents this stuff they call “Computer English”? Bill Gates seems like a too nice and down-to-earth a guy to cause such confusion. Certainly it has to have been someone who wants to make people like me feel like an idiot. It reminds me of so many men who, being unable to find their destination, still refuse to stop at numerous places along the road to ask for help. I think I am expected to figure out what those strange terms mean all by myself, even though they have no relationship whatsoever to any English word I might associate them with.

          I know there is more mind-boggling computer language that I don’t even know about. For what I use my computer for on a daily basis, I seem to survive quite well knowing the basic skills. I still can’t print out an envelope and if I had one of those expensive cameras I would probably fail at sending photos. I am greatly confused about sending things with “attachments.” And although someone taught me, I am not sure how “cut and paste” gets done.

          But, rest assured, long ago I mastered the game of “Solitaire.” Every morning is begun at my computer by playing three games, and just before I turn off the lights at the end of the day I play three more hands. I used to be able to play Bridge, Hearts and several various forms of Solitaire, but one day I pressed the wrong key and they all disappeared, leaving me only with the one game of standard Solitaire.

          Often I get sucked in by the game and long after the three games are won or lost I am still at it promising myself to play “just one more hand” and finding another hour has slipped by.