Have you ever traveled to a foreign country and, relying on your 4 years of high school foreign language, felt certain that you could communicate with the locals with relative ease? But noooooo, it's not easy. If only your attempt at communication required the few phrases burned into your brain such as "Silencio" or "Que hora es ya?" or with luck "Como te llama?". This isn't supposed to be this hard! You got an A in Spanish! This is supposed to flow and be fun and you'll understand and be understood. It's so frustrating!
My experience is similar when I try to navigate today's technology ladden world. I'm not a techno-phobe and I'm not a complete novice using computers. So why is it so hard to use them? Why can't I speak the language? My son says the problem is not so much what I'm doing wrong, it's that the gadget makers haven't provided customers intuitive interfaces. They're building thingamajigs for themselves, not for their mothers. WELL THEY NEED TO START THINKING ABOUT THEIR MOTHERS. JUST THIS ONCE IT'S NOT ABOUT THEM, IT'S ABOUT US. AND...THEY...OWE...US! (If in doubt I'll show you the slideshow of the pregnancies and births of my sons. Anyone who turns you into a whale owes you.)
If Captain Kirk relied on me to blow the Klingons into another universe no one on the Enterprise would have had time to accumulate PTO for an intergalactic holiday. "Which button? The round thingy with the squiggle or the blinky-thing to the left of it? Wait! I have to do what first? Update the hyperdrive! Hit thi...aaarrrgh."
I was looking at Fragglereader's blog and it's so cool. She's used Mosaickr on a picture of herself and has other cool pics including a banner! A BANNER? I'm still trying to get my blog included on the list of participants (I just checked; it's still a no-show even after we received the message "All blogs should be linked"). Hmmmmm. OK, I'm blaming this glitch on my magnetic personality again.
Check this out to watch a real mom deal with technology:
SOLD!
11 years ago
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1 comment:
You're right, technology is too difficult to use, and it is not designed for everyone. I guess you're right, we do owe our mothers! ;)
That's a great video clip, I love that one!
FYI, you can embed the video directly in the page by copying the embed code from YouTube (in the gray box near the top right of the YouTube page), clicking on the Edit HTML tab in your blog, and pasting in the code. The code looks like this:
<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/_TNN9xV2MkI&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/_TNN9xV2MkI&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>
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