New Technology & The Human Condition

I'm of the age where every new technological trick is gone into with a leap of faith and a whole lot of anxiety. The digital generation will not know what I'm talking about--they have always had to do these things--but those who have had to pick up technology along the way will. Each 'skill' (channeling Napolean Dynamite here) is begun with the same feeling Christopher Columbus must have had when setting out on his journeys. He wasn't sure he would get there, but, by gosh, some interesting things would surely happen along the way.

It makes me wonder why I am compelled to know how to do these things. It would be much easier to sit back and say, "Nah--I'm a Luddite. I don't believe this internet fad's gonna last." But nooooo. There I am, spending hours slaving over some little trick of html that I have no business getting myself involved in.

But I hate to be left behind when something is going on. I hate hearing people talk the language of the New Thing, whatever it might be, and not know what they mean. And I'm an information junkie as much as I am a word junkie, so the whole trip is inevitable.

And isn't that the thing that has kept the human species going and growing and changing and evolving--that drive to make something new, do something new, learn something new.

I've got a baaaad case of it. And there ain't no cure.