Digital diaries

I'm 42, and will turn 43 in about 6 weeks. From the 1980s when I was in university through the first few decades of my working life, I pushed back against paper organizers and diaries for some reason. I think it was something to do with wasteful paper, but I'm still not sure what event or series of experiences formed that behaviour. So I don't know why, but I've always had some aversion to wasteful consumption and have been waiting anxiously for this digital revolution.

Email was a great first step. I never liked the tedium of writing memos to someone around the corner in the office. When we moved to Hong Kong in 1991 I had been dialling up local PC billboards in Canada using X-Modem, then Y-Modem and for those of you who remember ... Z-Modem! Of course you couldn't download much, but it was fun leaving messages for the webmaster or whatever the term was back then, as the "web" hadn't been popularized. Then Compuserve and AOL became more and more prevalent and I got my first email account around 1992. Problem was, hardly anyone had email despite my frequent requests and lobbying. It slowly made its way into everyone's home and the question changed from "Do you have email?" to "What's your address?"

I'll save a blog for MS later; I think they're a great company that made North American companies very competitve, helped launch SMEs that continue to drive the economy, and still provides good value personal PC software despite the common rant about Big Brother. When Microsoft introduced Outlook with a Calendar, Contacts and Tasks, well that about solved my problem with paper diaries. The only problem was trying to connect to company email outside the office. Depending on how tough your IT guys are on security, you can do it easily or not. For me, it's not easy and I got sick of plugging in cables at hotels, playing with local providers, dialling up once again through fax machines because the PBX didn't connect to modems, and so on. So when the Blackberry ripened and dropped out of some engineer's brain, well it was yet another quantum leap forward in gettin' to your stuff quickly. Many rant against the intrusion of the Blackberry. Guys, let me tell you something: Turn the thing off if you like. It won't kill you. Otherwise, if you're like me and you don't like to just stare, bored, out the bus or taxi window, make use of your down time and keep yourself occupied.

Technology is getting better and more useful. I've been doing three things more and more: 1) Using Skype/VOIP to not only make cheap phone calls, but to stay in much better contact with people, particularly those I haven't seen for a long time; 2) Enjoying being able to use wireless anywhere in the house and other places like airports (even more so when I make a free Skype call at the same time); and 3) Editing digital video and doing things like uploading to YouTube. I spent the afternoon yesterday figuring out how to get an MPG onto my PC, splitting it up into segments and then adding titles. Back in early 2007 I formed a one-night band with my son and our single performance was on video and in need of making it up to YouTube for friends and family to see. I got the hang of it and did a decent job: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7pS-I08cAA will take you to a playlist. I'm listening now and boy did we (I) push that first instrumental along! About 20% too quick, but it was the first time for most of us.

Right now I'm connected to our wifi network and blogging, doing some work and listening to our YouTube file that loaded when I copied the link. Not quite Eric Clapton Unplugged, but not bad for some amateurs. I'm listening to my nervous, prerecorded voice that I now know is "pitchy" or just plain "off key, dude" in IdolSpeak.

So technology is a great thing that you should adapt and put to the right amount of use in your own life. Don't ignore all the great tools these days otherwise you will simply get more disenchanted with the buildup of what you don't know. This is where grumpy old folks get their start--By ignoring what's going on around them to the point where they can't fit in, they don't understand what's going on and they simply revolt. Stay young and in touch by staying online.