Came of Age Before Computers

"Proust & the Squid": Reading and the Internet

2008-07-26T17:37:00.022-07:00

Dr. Maryanne Wolf is concerned about the generation who has begun its reading life looking at text delivered to them, often from the Internet, via a computer screen rather than the printed page. As the Director of the Center for Reading and Language Research at Tufts University in Boston, she is doing high-tech research looking at the brain itself, to evaluate whether anecdotal reports about reduced attention spans and impatience with complexity are because our brains themselves are changing. Brains remain plastic throughout our lives. Are they physically adapting to a skimming style of reading? And if so, does this shift reduce our capacity to do what she calls "deep reading"?

She has written a book on this subject, called "Proust & the Squid: the Story and Science of the Reading Brain" (published in Canada by Harper Collins). Her work is also discussed in the Atlantic Monthly's "Is Google Making Us Stoopid?" which I discussed in my June 18 posting here: "An Article Worth Reading (All the Way Through)".

Her ideas seem to be getting mainstream attention. Last week, I heard an interview with her on CBC Radio One's popular "Sunday Edition". In the twenty minute conversation with Kevin Sylvester, she described how when she started writing "Proust and the Squid" her intention was to describe the "miraculous" deep reading process. When it comes to reading, she said, "the point of it all is to take what you read and then think and infer and gain insight. It is really beyond what a lot of people think about as 'just' reading. It's deep thinking .. and it takes place in one hundred to two hundred milliseconds. Over the eight years that she was writing the book "I had a completely different world on my hands". The effect of doing research using the vast amount of data streaming in from the Internet was resulting in a "skimming" reading style. "I was really beginning to worry that we were losing what we have. That it was trickling through our fingers ... not the older reader, but all that the younger reader was not necessarily going to do if their formation for reading was in the more superficial mode that is too often the case with the 'screen' kind of reading... By the end of the book I was filled with questions about what we don't know, and what we really need to be vigilant and do some very good and very sophisticated research on. What does that child who has really learned how to read as a 'screen reader'. What is the difference between that reader, and you, Kevin, who comes to the screen with a well-formed, critical, inferential reading kind of a mind?

"So I'm questioning whether the formation is going to lead us to have children who don't have the same kind of intrinsic 'pause button' that you and I have when we read and we know we have to go under the surface; don't assume anything; want to fill in the blanks; want to go back and check. There's a real critical -- and I use a term by a poet -- 'quality of attention' that we bring to reading because that's how we were formed. What I want to do is ... do research .. and see whether or not the strength of comprehension processes is altered... Reading is not natural in the sense that there is a genetic code that says it has to go this way. The Chinese reader is different from an English reader... [who]... is just a little bit different from a French reader ... So we certainly know we can form a different circuit. So my question and my concern ... is that we may be, without intention, giving rise to children who are more superficial and less analytical than you and I."

Her opinions have brought resistance. In her conversation she makes it clear that she, as a neural scientist who uses sophisticated technological tools to study the brain, is not a Luddite. Nor is she alone. She points to where the National Endowment for the Arts, using a different research basis is "coming to similar concerns" in their publication "To Read or Not To Read".

How to start addressing her concerns? She asks for "quality research" on this topic. And "close scrutiny" to "phasing-in technology... so before we know our answer, we won't have lost our kids. It's too important not to raise these concerns, even though I don't have the evidence. Because we have a lot of kids out there who are being shaped every single day of the year in ways that I think we've lost control over."

For the entire twenty-minute conversation, here is the podcast of the CBC Radio 1 "Sunday Edition" aired July 20, 2008

What is a computer and why do I have to use it?

2008-07-08T09:46:00.003-07:00

My father worked at the National Research Council and he used to tell me about the computers that he worked with and how large they were. At the time, they took up whole rooms and the computer cards that we used at church to make Christmas wreaths, always looked so strange with all those holes poked in them.

In the late 70's, I worked in a medical laboratory in Ottawa. At the time everything was written by hand or we used typewriters. The medical requisitions were all handcoded for billing but then we had a team that came in to implement the transition from paper to computer.

I remember being told that the computer would tell you by a beep if you made an incorrect entry. That "thing" beeped all the time. I refused to learn how to use it, I couldn't handle the rejection of a computer beeping. From that day forward, I decided to never get a job where I had to use a computer. Forget that. No way.

Kids do change your life. Looking back, I should have known that I was being set up by my parents when they brought over a computer for the kids. You know the kind, that took the big floppy disks and the CPU was a big thing that sat on the desk. Games, if you have a phobia working with computers, learn how to play children's games. That way you get used to a cursor and how to navigate the mouse. But these games were in DOS, before the mouse and Word.
Still, we spent many a night as a family with young kids, trying to figure out who could go to the highest level during Crystal Caves, my how I miss that game.

Well, eventually, I had to learn how to use wordperfect, as I was too daunted to try Microsoft Word, and eventually I had to learn how to use Word. Even though sometimes the computers still beep at me, I am now considered as the "computer wiz" where I work and I love computers.

An article worth reading (all the way through)

2008-06-18T13:41:00.017-07:00

My friend Louse pointed me towards "Is Google Making Us Stoopid? What the Internet is doing to our brains" in the July/August issue of the Atlantic Monthly. Since I read it voraciously, I have mentioned the title to a couple of friends. Each had a strong response, but in opposite directions. One friend nodded vigorously, while the other rolled his eyes. The author, Nicholas Carr, is ready to acknowledge that "maybe I'm just a worrywart ... Perhaps those who dismiss critics of the Internet as Luddites or nostalgists will be proved correct, and from our hyperactive, data-stoked minds will spring a golden age of intellectual discovery and universal wisdom." He goes on, however, to express his concern that "as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence".

His starting point is his own shrinking attention span while reading, and a growing similar concern being expressed by others who also do most of their reading and research online. He cites both anecdotal and research evidence, as well as theorists like Marshall McLuhan, to support his theory that "What the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski." Pointing out that "even the adult mind is 'very plastic''', he uses the example of how, after the philosopher, Nietzsche, switched from handwriting to using a typewriter, he observed that "our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts". Not for the better, apparently. Carr quotes a scholar who observed that "Nietzsche's prose 'changed from arguments to aphorisms, from thoughts to puns, from rhetoric to telegram style".

Carr quotes Larry Page, one of the founders of Google: "For us, working on search is a way to work on artificial intelligence". But Carr suggests that the Internet has re-introduced on a cognitive level the "maximum speed, maximum efficiency, maximum output" ethic which, in a manufacturing setting, produced the assembly line "industrial choreography" which many found demeaning and dehumanizing. "In Google's world, the world we enter when we go online, there's little place for the fuzziness of contemplation. Ambiguity is not an opening for insight but a bug to be fixed. The human brain is just an outdated computer that needs a faster processor and a bigger hard drive."

Even Carr confesses he doesn't read more than three paragraphs of a blog, and I notice that I'm now moving into my fourth. So I had better stop here. But please don't stop with my digest of a thoughtful and thought-provoking article. In the spirit of "use it or lose it", pick up the magazine, find a summer park bench and give it the time and attention it deserves.

"Connections" Revisited

2008-05-28T19:06:00.008-07:00

The above ten-minute video segment introduces the first episode of the seminal BBC-TV series "Connections" created by James Burke in 1975, about technological change. In closing, Burke strikes the theme of his series with a quote "... Our modern world affects us all. If you understand something today, that means it must already be obsolete. Or to put it another way -- never have so many people understood so little about so much." He describes the series as "detective story" looking at selected inventions which acted as "triggers" because they stimulated the production of further inventions which cumulatively changed "the way things are".

My twenty-five year old son watches this series on YouTube in the same way as we used to read National Geographic together as a bedtime story. When I fired "Connections" up today, I too found it fascinating. For me it is a COABC nexus that supports my growing conviction about the trans-generational nature of the issues arising from the search for a balanced use of technology.

This series was first aired over thirty years ago - four years after I graduated with my first university degree and seven years before my son was born. My son had heard about this series a few years ago, and had even priced the DVD's before he found the cost too high to request the set as a Christmas present from his dad and myself. He reports stumbling upon the series while surfing on YouTube and found that the one-hour episode is now available for free -- though each hour is now chopped into ten-minute "quick-chew" segments.

I am intrigued. In this first show, Burke's jumping-off point is to ask the viewer to look around them where they are sitting, and to reflect upon how their lives would change if the technology around them disappeared. Then he uses re-enactments of the "technology traps" revealed by the 1965 New York City blackout to point out how dependent we are on using technologies that, as individuals, we don't understand sufficiently that we could replicate them. Over the course of one hour he brings in subjects which were, at the time, theoretical ... like the effects of climate change, water shortages and natural disasters that precipitate mass evacuations. Thirty years before Hurricane Katrina and the recent earthquakes in China, this mixture of cultural theory and history also predated the Internet. When Burke creates disturbing scenarios about the losses implicit in the disruption of networks, he is talking about electricity.

Both my son and myself enjoy the combination of well-presented and disturbing scenarios with inadvertent cultural artifacts -- like the passengers stubbing out their cigarettes as their airplane, Flight 911, approached the NYC landing strip at precisely the moment the lights went out. We also agree that the questions that James Burke posed now seem prescient, and are even more relevant today for both those who came of age before and after computers.

Looking for the shift key

2008-05-07T09:17:00.029-07:00

"Shift happens". That is the theme of the above 8-minute slide show, "Did You Know 2.0", about the pace of technological change. Aimed at American parents, educators and legislators, it makes a strong point that, in terms of globalization, we do ourselves and our children a favour by facing the fact that "we live in an exponential world".

I sent my April 17 article called "Snail mail in a post-fax world" to my ex-boss, who is featured there in my story of how, thirty years ago, I resisted his early adoption of the new fax technology. He currently teaches a course where he stresses "embracing technology", and kicks off his class with the above video.

I found myself watching it with double vision. As a parent, I am cheering my tech-savvy son on. But personally, I look at these daunting statistics from the other side of the digital divide. The video quotes Albert Einstein: "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." On a cognitive level, I can see the big picture. But on an experiential level, I feel the same sort of isolation that I imagine is felt by parents who have immigrated into a culture with a different language. They moved out of their own comfort zone to give their children more advantages, but find themselves coping with communication barriers that impede their own daily life. One person described her experience of rapid technical change in terms of the experience of leaving your mother tongue behind -- with the added dimension, for her, that she had not chosen to leave home.

In my city, some newcomer neighbourhoods have bilingual street signs, just to help people without strong English skills to find their way around. I hope to be able to use this blog as a space to provide similar non-judgemental bridges for those who came of age before computers -- people I refer to as "COABC's". It seems to me that there are dilemmas being faced, even by those of us who are trying to "be part of the solution", around the new learnings implicit in retooling our skills. Many are ashamed to admit to fatigue, conflicting time priorities, lack of access, and different learning styles. In another posting here, for example, I direct parents and teachers to the British BT Internet Rangers site, which gives children tools to teach digital skills to their grandparents. Shift does indeed happen. But a child grows in compassion at the same time as their granny grows in skills, when they sit together at a computer locating that key.

The "unplugged movement"- a quick blog survey

2008-05-04T00:53:00.026-07:00

This morning, now that Shutdown Day is over, I find that their site is still not responding. Hmmmm... so I decided to look around at blog commentary about the "unplugged movement" which is related to the theme of yesterday's event. On the MSNBC site I found an article called "Texting while driving? Time to unplug" with the subtitle "A grass roots movement has tech geeks wresting back control of their lives". Also I checked out a blog by artist Sharon Sarmiento called eSoup with an article called "How artists do the web differently", and another called 52 Nights Unplugged which advocates "taking one night a week away from the digital pacifier". There is also one on the MSNBC News Site "Is there such thing as being too connected?" subtitled "The unwired think so. And they are not all sticks-in-the-mud."

The fact that all the above blogs are written by people who came of age AFTER computers is very interesting to me. This year, as I have been talking a lot about the theme of this blog in class, I found to my surprise that I was wrong in my assumption that my concerns are necessarily an age-related thing. A classmate, Genevieve Cloutier, interviewed me from a broader perspective for her documentary course, and we plan to do a more extended piece together about it over the summer. I have embedded her 5 1/2 minute YouTube video into my April 4 article "Making friends with my shadow." In future postings I'll be looking more into the subject here. But not today. I've organized a picnic for my family members who came to my grad, so the rest of today will be my own "digital day off".

Please turn off this computer! Today is Shutdown Day

2008-05-03T09:12:00.007-07:00

May 3 is a global event which is the "buy nothing day" of computers. The intention is to make people aware of how much of their best time and energy is being spent hunched over a keyboard. Sometimes you can't avoid having to be there -- in fact, if you are reading this at the kiosk at the opening night of the Emily Carr undergraduate exhibition, I'm here at a computer myself! This one has been set to run 24/7 for the week of the show, so there IS no way to power down. If you look around right now, you will see me standing here hoping to have a conversation with you about my project, which is this blog. I'm the one dressed in black with the glasses.

But if you are at home, please bookmark this blog and come back tomorrow. Needless to say, today the Shutdown Day website itself has been turned off. But come midnight, you could check it out to see reports coming of the many people who participated in the event by joining flashmobs being held around the world. Last year, according to reports, most people spent the 24 hours off from their computer having sex. This year, many will be doing the same, but it is nice to have an alternate. A flashmob gives the opportunity is go out and play with other people with a similar intention to risk taking the time to see how it feels to be out in a world unmediated by a computer screen. Last year I was out writing cherry-blossom haikus, as you can see in my video "Shutdown Day--One Year After" in the April 27 posting below.

This blog is my art school graduation project

2008-05-02T11:24:00.003-07:00

Tomorrow I graduate from Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design, in Vancouver, Canada with a Bachelor of Media Arts, and I will be receiving the Governor General's Silver Medal for the best marks in the class. Our graduation project is meant to represent what we currently see as our core creative work, and after much thought, I decided that this blog best represents what I see myself doing as an artist for the near future. It gives me an opportunity to self-publish my own writing and video work, as well as to feature other videos and websites which I think are relevant to the themes I explore here.

Like any artist, I will be trying to represent my own core concerns in a way that resonates for other people. Right now, for me, that concern is about how to have a balanced response to rapid technical change. I came back to school in my mid-fifties, and this gave me a chance to see the relevance of my own work in the context of other art that is being done now. At about the mid-point of my studies I switched to a department where I could learn how to use electronic tools like digital photography and video. I also started putting my work for public view via the Internet, rather than through the more traditional gallery system. As I am about to graduate, I am glad that I have skills and experience which give me the tools and credibility to be taken seriously, as I comment upon the pros and cons of those very tools.

There is a bit of "deja vu" operating here. In my first round as an artist, in my twenties, I worked in what is now called "traditional media" - doing drawings and sculpture. But by the time I was thirty, in the early 1980's, I started to respond to what I called "the writing on the wall". I was part of a group of artists who started an artist run centre called "Toronto Community Videotex" to work together to develop skills to create content for the precursor to the Internet. I am delighted that this organization, now known as InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre, has not only survived to celebrate it's 25th Anniversary this year, but is a vibrant part of Toronto's art community.

When we fast forward to 1999, and my return to electronic media, the sad reality was that I was twenty-five years older too, and had lost my position as an "early adopter". But I had become intrigued by the City of Vancouver's Millennium Project Portrait V2K, where you can find my story if you search for "Strider". I loved the concept that a website gave them the capacity to publish every story and photo that citizens would upload, and got my high-school son to help me to scan and upload my story and photo. I was lucky that I scored on my first try. My story became one of the featured ones, silkscreened on a huge banner in the project's year-long exhibition at the Vancouver Museum.

Positive experiences like that made me open to exploring new media when I returned to art school. But initially I felt a lot of shame as I sat in the computer lab, surrounded by students who seemed to have been working with computers since the day they were born. I was committing myself to spending a lot of time in a very steep learning curve, often feeling awkward and stupid. Conversations with people who were mid-life and older made me realize that I was not alone in feeling this way. So the exploration of this "shadow" is currently my central creative theme. For now, what interests me most is an examination of the impact on daily life that results from lack of skills, access -- or interest -- in electronic tools like computers, email, and cell phones. On a broader level, I hope that readers of this blog will also find positive suggestions for using the Internet itself to facilitate a zestier engagement in the face-to-face world.

Computer Shutdown Day Saturday May 3

2008-04-27T15:15:00.017-07:00

The global Shutdown Day event takes place on Saturday, May 3 -- and ironically, given how much I have been promoting it, I will not only have my computer on, but it is the centerpiece of my grad project for the show that opens that night! However, I feel good that I was able to make two contributions: the two-minute video below entitled it "Shutdown Day - One Year Later" about my initial participation. It is embedded on their Shutdown Day website and has gotten over 6,000 views. The second contribution I think I made was an early email discussion with Denis, the Montreal computer programmer, who initiated this day to encourage balance around computer use. I pointed out that last year's event had been the same day as the flashmob pillow fight on the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery, and asked if that had been intentional. It hadn't been, but this year the central concept is for people to participate in local flash mobs rather than sit hunched over their computers. The grad exhibition goes for a week, and this blog will go on indefinitely. And all of you who are out taking part in Shutdown Day, check me out on another day!

My Interview with Waldo

2008-04-25T17:27:00.003-07:00

I did a couple of all-nighters on making the above video "The Waldo Interview". I have been collaborating closely on the "Where on Earth is Waldo" project with Melanie Coles, and we wanted to get this video available as soon as possible to feed the global multi-media interest. Please follow the above link to her blog to learn about her project in her own words. In keeping with the theme of this blog, this reflects on my Waldo experience using the COABC (Came of Age Before Computers) point of view.

The first learning point for myself is that -- at the age of fifty-seven -- if I am going to be choosing to work for fifty hours solid, I need an ergonomic chair!

Also, what does it mean for me personally that, having chosen to commit to doing my art using a computer, I found that working on the Waldo project was the most fun I've had at Art School? I think that a big part of the reason that the Waldo project went viral on the Internet is that the aerial photo is of a real object -- it is not a photoshopped image on a map. I think there is a hunger for the "embodied", as I call it. The 54-foot painting of Waldo up on the roof is real, as are the fifteen art students who worked together to put him up there. As this blog evolves, I will be focusing more on Internet-related projects that re-connect people back into participating in the face-to-face world.

Another personal COABC reflection is that now there are some Internet places where I not only have stopped grinding my teeth, but actually enjoy myself. YouTube is one of these sites. From the user point of view, it is simple. Click a link recieved in an email or the "play" arrow in a website, and away the video goes. No matter how old and clunky your computer, and how basic your skills on the web, there are no compatibility issues, nor extra software you need. No wonder YouTube has leaped over the digital divide!

Finally, at the time I am writing this, two of my YouTube videos -- "The Waldo Interview" and "Shutdown Day, One Year Later" (see my March 24 article) -- have had over 2000 "hits". A third, "The Making of Waldo" (April 10) , has had over 1500 people fire it up. A "hit" means that somebody out there found an art piece that I made, and then took the time to watch it. As an artist, I am just as thrilled at a report of a hit as I would be looking at the guest book of people who had dropped into a gallery, or the tally of how many sat in a theatre to watch it. But I know that it is very unlikely that I would ever get that kind of attention, here on the ground, as a new grad -- or ever! A "hit" is the currency of the internet. An ephemeral connection. But I do feel like I'm getting paid. In a future posting I will look at the implications.

Snail mail in a post-fax world

2008-04-17T07:36:00.024-07:00

Twenty years ago, I saw no future in faxes. Now I am in the place where I've come to believe that again. Throughout it all, snail mail has kept poking along. Does snail mail have a future? I hope so, not only for myself, but for my parents.

When faxes first came on the market in the mid-eighties and my boss asked me to buy a fax machine, I resisted. What would you ever use them for, when the mail only took three days? He told me to order one anyway. I was gratified when it sat gathering dust for weeks in the filing room. But then one day the green light on the clunky machine flickered, and out rolled a hot shiny piece of thermal paper with a customer's order on it. The rest is history.

Fast-forward to my recent decision not to buy a scanner that threw in a personal fax capability. This time the problem for me is that I no longer have a land-line telephone. Anyway, between emails and the scanner, when would I ever need to use a fax? If I ever found myself needing to send a fax because the destination required one, I could always do it from the post office.

For moments like that, I am really happy that the post office is there, and I am glad that I can contribute to the salary of that nice person who works there. It is the courier for people who don't have receptionists. And they haven't quite figured out how to squeeze Christmas packages through wires. I correspond with my siblings by email, and sometimes my sister will print them out in large font and take them over to my parents. There is a new American service Postful.com which converts emails into letters and mails them for you, for a price.

Currently, as I am about to graduate with a "high-tech" media degree, I am making my own "high-touch" thank-you cards for the people who have supported me. I visualize the pleasure of my friends and family when they find that tactile personal envelope in their mailboxes -- an occasion like a parcel used to be. Perhaps I could buy a package of envelopes and address and stamp them in advance to commit myself, then print out those family emails myself. My sister would appreciate it, it would support the postal service, and it would probably make my dad's day to have a real letter arrive through the "inbox" in the middle of his door.

Looking forward to your comments

Perspective

2008-04-13T09:08:00.009-07:00

There are days in the lab at school when I deeply regret the decades it took me to get back to art school after my yoyo attitude led me to drop out back when I was still in my early twenties. But in the spirit of "looking on the bright side" I've always comforted myself that all those intervening years at least led to some wisdom, which could add depth to my point of view. However this morning at 4:00 a.m., as I was winding down from my video editing on the "Waldo Interview" piece, I had to confront that I might be losing my Wisdom edge as well.

For one thing, I seem to have slipped into a mode where I check the day's analytics on this blog in order to wind down. Hmmmm ... whatever happened to my longtime routine of using that time to work through the Public Library's "Maeve Binchey Readalike" list? For another thing, when I did fire up my "Dashboard" I felt the sort of reaction that, had I seen it in my son, would have led to a Mother/Son Talk about seeing the cup as being half-full rather than half-empty.

Scroll down to the picture of the dashboard I posted yesterday -- where my blog had achieved a summit of 90 hits on April 11. Well, okay. It was 89. Well this morning, when I peeked instead of going straight to bed, I saw to my horror that the midnight posting of the April 12 hits showed me sliding down the other side of my little mountain. Here is the "one day later" graph.

What would I say to my son? I would tell him that he could look at 45 hits -- well, actually 39 -- as being still more than twice my pre-Waldo-Echo peak of 15 on April 3. I'd also try to get a little sermonette about celebrity in before he put his headphones back on. Which I am about to do right now with my own headphones. Still hoping to get that little sucker up on YouTube before Melanie's CBC National Radio interview on "Q" tomorrow.

Part of the COABC demographic - by ladyofthelake

2008-04-12T18:35:00.005-07:00

When I read your posts I often feel like you are talking about me. I have come late to the computer, digital camera, cell phone age and find it challenging but rewarding when I master a small skill.

I loved the piece on your cell phone. I got my first ever cell phone about a month ago and am still very intimidated by it. My husband (he has never had one either) and I spent a whole evening going through the instruction book just learning the basics which I had pretty much forgotten by the morning.

Yes I am definitely a COABC and can totally relate as to how difficult it must have been to go back to school with all those new generation tech whizzes.

I became much more interested in improving my computer skills when my daughters went away to school and I wanted to communicate and share photos.

I recently started a new job which requires quite a bit of computer use and I am very lucky to have a young lady I work with who willingly give me lots of help and advice. She is very patient!

I am very impressed at how you are getting out there helping, shall we say more mature people learn how to use digital cameras, computers etc. not to mention completing your degree at Emily Carr. You must be very proud of yourself as you should be.

I am looking forward to reading and learning more from your blog.

Riding a (good) viral event

2008-04-12T09:33:00.017-07:00

The word "virus" in relation to computers started out as a bad thing. But now, with blogs, to have something you uploaded "go viral" is a huge thrill. I'm getting a small taste of that now, and it gives me insight into the world view of my son and fellow students. On the Sunday before the CBC TV interview which brought Melanie Coles' "Where On Earth Is Waldo" project to the attention of Brazil, and eventually the world, I put together the above video based on a slide show that I made as a an assignment for class. I uploaded it to YouTube when she got on TV the next day. In the one week that it has been up there, as of today 700 people have looked at it. That is a whole movie theatre worth of people. (And if you click on it now, it will be 701!) As a comparison in the year that I have been uploading videos there, I have had just over 800 views of all the other 12 videos.

So now I am right in the middle of being involved in a good story, and, because we live in a time-compressed world, now is the time tell it. Today I'm going into school to use the sound studio to do an interview with Waldo to upload to YouTube as fast as I can - hopefully before Monday (April 14) when Melanie has a national radio interview on "Q". See my postings below on April 10 and April 3 for more details and a link to her site. She has embedded a link to my blog, where, before the word got out, I had posted an article looking at her work in the context of other art. I subscribe to Google Analytics and I have been monitoring the echo effect of people coming over from Melanie's blog to check out mine.

She is using analytics to monitor her site too, and we both noticed that the sudden peaking flattened the prior lines on our graphs. Her blog was getting 1500 hits AN HOUR yesterday, whereas my peak was 90, the day that Brazil found Waldo. But for me it is a thrill. And I am beginning to understand how seductive it is to check how you are doing on the internet. So this has been a good COABC moment of insight.

Another COABC insight is the sense of urgency to put more material up there to meet the demand, out of a sense that we might be hitting Minute 7.5 of our Andy Warhol quota. I have looked around me in the lab during this end of term crunch, and know the solution to time compression is to find shortcuts. Here is where I trip over my ten thumbs, which feel very big right now! I had enough knowledge to be there doing the scanning, but not enough to know that a shortcut I took was going to have exactly the catastrophic effect I keep assuring COABC's is not likely to happen if they just take the risk and thrash around a bit. Long story short, I found myself without access to any of the source files I had so carefully collected during my role as Melanie's video documenter throughout the project. I knew I was vulnerable -- that my external drive was old, and was suddenly being carried around a lot. But I needed to be able to move all those files somewhere else. And the problem with backing up large amounts of data, is that you need a bigger container. I had already bought myself a larger external drive, but to do all the formatting and so on I needed to either take the time to figure it out, or organize myself to ask for help. So it was sitting on my table, stlll in the packaging, when the one it was supposed to replace took a dive. Murphy's law had kicked in, as it tends to do when you are busy and it feels like there is no time.

So that was the bad news. But the good news is that I DID know enough all along to be burning DVD's of the Waldo source files and giving them to Melanie. So I actually had that "backup" that computer repair guys always ironically ask you for. And for bonus points, it was "offsite". Though getting it back involved Melanie hiding the disks that night in a hole in a wall next to her place of work. Unlike Paris Hilton, we both had to interrupt our fame to go in to our part-time jobs. I had a cell phone moment like one sometimes overhears late at night on buses, as Melanie gave me directions to "it" and my side of the conversation must have sounded like a drug deal! Bottom line, today I have the files, tomorrow (please God) I upload a new video to YouTube to catch the wave of CBC listeners on Monday. Wish me luck!

Live and Around The World With Computers - by Michael Godin

2008-04-11T16:24:00.005-07:00

I first became involved with computers back in the mid-80s when I was still working at A&M Records as V.P. of A&R (Artist and Repertoire). Computers first became introduced there with a big main frame for all of the financial aspects of the company, sales, inventory, recording budgets, etc., and then personal computers for the various departments. Over the subsequent years, I became involved with computers, but for mainly office type functions.

However in 1997, I came of age with computers and the Internet when I started an online oldies radio show, Treasure Island Oldies. In those days, listening to music on the Internet with a 28.8 kbps modem was almost the equivalent of having to hold two tin cans attached end to end by a piece of string. If you spoke into one can and both ends were held to keep the string taut, the person at the other end would hear that other person's voice. However, dialup was susceptible to the 'loose string' syndrome, and you often lost the signal. Since those days in the last century, my show has grown with the technology of better audio streaming technology, higher bandwidth and much greater stability.

I host the occasional video feed of the show live from the studio; a chance for the listener to play voyeur into a radio studio and watch the dj putting on the show. The show is available in stereo in high speed broadband in both Real Media and Windows Media formats, and is heard all over the world with listeners in the far reaches of the Earth. I receive a lot of email from those listeners and I am also able to see the various countries where listeners and visitors are from who come to the website. Another cool aspect is that the live show is archived for later listening on demand. As the show is live from 6 to 10 p.m. Pacific time Sunday evenings, many international listeners can hear the show at a more convenient time for them.

The show is extremely interactive, with a library of over 12,000 titles (so not many repeats of Pretty Woman and Unchained Melody every 20 minutes), a live chat room where the "nuts in the hut" hang out together every week for four hours of music and sharing the live show together. There are instant email requests and a 24/7 voicemail request line.

May 4th marks the 11th Anniversary of Treasure Island Oldies, a passion of mine for all these years, and a labour of love, with the odd bit of income from text ads from AdBrite and Google Ads, and a handful of listeners who "subscribe" to the show for $4.95 a month via PayPal. But I don't and have never doine this show for the money. If that were the cae, it would have ceased years ago. I do it because I must, need to, am driven to do it - I love it. It's my artistic release. I love sharing great music and the memories that go along with it.

What I am most proud of is how this show remains my prime creative passion and outlet, and the fact that it is now one of the longest running oldies radio shows in the world on the Internet. Do a Google search for any number of phrases like oldies radio show, oldies blogs, rare oldies, lost treasures oldies, etc. You'll be surprised with the results.

Since September of 2007, I got tired of either no replies or negative responses from networks to carry my show, so I established my own private syndication network and apart from being online on the mediaontap network, the show is now also heard on FM, AM and other Online radio stations across the USA in Georgia, New Hampshire, Indiana, Washington State, Massachusetts, Texas, and New York; in the UK in Manchester and London, and in Sweden in Gothenberg. This week I have a brand new station joining the network, 102.7 FM CIWS Whistle Radio in Whitchurch-Stoufville, just north of Toronto. They only launched a few weeks ago and they are now my first radio station in my own country, Canada!

So yes, I sure have come of age since computers and in particular, the Internet.

Waldo project getting global attention!

2008-04-10T14:25:00.013-07:00

Three days ago, Melanie and a television crew did a CBC TV Interview on the rooftop. The part I liked the best was when she put her hand over the lens and said "Don't photograph the rooftops!"

Next day her website WhereOnEarthIsWaldo.com got 4,000 hits from Brazil, where the project had been covered by both TV and radio. The day after that (which was only yesterday!) Melanie found herself cutting class and requesting extensions on her due dates at school in order to do interviews with media - not only Canadian but also from the US and the UK. She tells the story of her surprise ride into fame on her site.

This morning two local newspapers, the Vancouver Sun and 24 Hours both had a photo of Waldo on the front page.

We were really glad that I had a short 1.5 minute video based on my slide presentation on Melanie's project to our grad class already done. The day the news broke I uploaded it to YouTube. Here is a link
"The Making of 'Where On Earth Is Waldo'".

Next for me is to make a second YouTube video based on the premise of an interview between myself and Waldo, about how it feels to be a famous quarry (again). Here is a photo of myself and Waldo, after we had finished laying him out.

The cover story yesterday in the newspaper "24 hours" concluded "The popularity of the project, which caled for 15 friends working 16 hours in a lower Eastside studio, proves anything is possible." As one of those 15 -- who became involved right from September when Melanie first described her very simple, oddball idea -- I know that, hands down, this has been the most fun I've had at art school. As a COABC I've been hesitant to come forward to work with groups, and have tended to isolate myself. A lot of that was due to self-imposed fear and shame about my slowness on the uptake with the technical tools. I am so glad that Melanie and I were part of a small mutual support group on our grad projects. She welcomed me as a collaborator, and I can see that my participation has been useful, and that I did bring a different but also useful set of strengths.

And now I'm off to work on that video! This coming Monday, Melanie gets interviewed on "Q", the CBC Radio One show. I hope to have something up there by then!

Making friends with my shadow

2008-04-08T15:33:00.001-07:00

This 5 1/2 minute video was made by a fellow student and friend, Genevieve Cloutier. She is in her twenties, and pointed out to me that younger people also struggle to maintain balance in regard to technology. She and I plan to do a documentary this summer to explore the topic more deeply. In the meantime she did this piece where I talked how the digital divide, culture jamming, this blog, and about the "duhhh" factor.

Where On Earth Is Waldo?

2008-04-03T09:49:00.022-07:00

As I describe in my profile, as a "Came of Age Before Computers" artist I rather reluctantly switched into media arts when I became convinced that the innovative art for the foreseeable future was going to involve digital material and be accessible through the Internet. On of my friends during this, my final year as a student of Media Arts, is Melanie Coles. We have been helping each other out with our grad projects, and so I've had the delightful experience of working with her on hers. Her work is a good example of interesting art which uses the internet as the medium, just as other people use paint. Though she uses paint too....

I was one of many volunteers who helped her to paint a huge "Waldo" and hide it on an undisclosed rooftop in Vancouver. It is now there, cheerfully looking heavenwards, waiting for the next Google Earth "fly-by" when a satellite photo will be taken.

Last night we sat side by side in a computer lab at school as she was looking for the first time at aerial shots taken from a helicopter. To see the shots from the helicopter, follow the attached link to Where On Earth Is Waldo her blog about the project. We have already found the rooftop on Google Earth, and have found that the level of detail of the zoom showed a barbeque right next to where her Waldo Painting is now located. When will the photo of Waldo show up on Google Earth? Nobody knows. They schedule regular updates of their photos, especially in urban areas like Vancouver, but have a policy of not disclosing when they will be aiming their camera at a particular area. Possibly because there is an increasing interest in projects like Melanie's where objects are being created to be seen from a Google-eye view.

As an art student, Melanie has deliberately situated her Waldo within a history of land art that is on a scale and located in a way as to be aimed at the eye of a deity rather than to be seen by those on the ground. The huge images carved into the chalk on hillsides in Britain stretched back to ancient times, long before it was visalized that people could ever fly. In July 2007, as part of the launch of the Simpsons movie, a biodegradable Homer was painted next to a famous chalk fertility symbol called the "Cerne Abbas Giant". Here is a link to the BBC coverage about how local pagans "Wish for Rain to Wash Away Homer"

The huge, donut-waving Homer is part of the growing body of "Google Earth" art work which is intended to be experienced indirectly through the lens of satellite photos. Some real-world artworks, such as the Leaning Tower of Pisa as seen by Google Earth can be found easily by typing the name into the search. The link I gave is to a searching a popular website called "Sightseer on Google Earth" which facilitates looking at monuments from a different point of view. It was only a short step beyond looking at real monuments for artists to start doctoring digital photos to add content. An example is a series by a group of Australian collective of artists and designers called "The Glue Society". The example shown here is a Google-eye view of the parting of the Red Sea. Here is a link to an online article "The Bible according to Google Earth"

Those of us who relate to Google as primarily a work or research tool sometimes do not hear about how deeply it is becoming embedded in our culture, especially for those who grew up with it. There is a growing, highly ironic, theory growing in Vancouver 24-hour internet coffee shops about "Is Google God", since it seems to possess many of the powers that have been ascribed to a deity -- for example "Sees all" and "Knows all". There is a tongue-in-the-cheek website called The Church of Google which offers eight proofs that Google is indeed God. I would be interested if anyone who grew up in the days before Google cares to comment about what role Google has taken in their lives.

One less "oops". A success story.

2008-03-17T14:24:00.008-07:00

I have an ambivalent relationship with my cell-phone. I cancelled my "land line" a few years ago, without regret. But currently I prefer the simplest, least committed type of relationship with the my cell phone carrier-- a "prepaid" account -- analogous to living together as opposed to being married. I pay by the minute, from the moment a connection is made. Needless to say, I try to avoid making unnecessary calls -- let alone unintentional ones.

How can one be surprised at having initiated an outgoing call? It is very easy to do on my phone, due to what seems to me to be a design flaw in the placement of the keys. The keys are so small that I often find myself pressing the adjacent key rather than the one that I intend. The red key is used for hanging up a call and for turning off the unit. I sometimes accidentally hit the #3 key which is right below it. One function of key #3 is for speed-dialing. So sometimes, after thinking I have turned my phone off, I have heard a tiny little mystified "hello?" coming from my pocket.

This has proven embarrassing as well as expensive. I partially fixed the problem by getting into the habit of immediately changing the speed dial assignment of any new entry to my phone book from #3 to something else. That works fine, except that my phone just cannot leave that #3 slot empty, and automatically tries to assign it again the next time.

I've just come up with a solution which I think is fairly elegant -- I assigned the #3 as the speed dial for my cell phone company's customer service line. The only free calls I can make are to them. And since this company also provided my poorly designed phone, I think it is fitting that my accidental calls are now going out to "Andrea", their automated robot voice. I smile when I hear that tinny little voice calling out of my pocket to tell me "Your call is important to us!" She can't even make any money for her company out of my mistake!

Shutdown Day 2008 is on for May

2008-03-05T10:12:00.012-08:00

Good news! Computer Shutdown Day is a "go" for this year, though this year it will be later in the spring -- sometime in May. They are taking the time to build the event without burning themselves out! I'll pass the date information on when I see the announcement.

In the meantime, check out the stirring of this year's activity (like a bear coming out of hibernation) on the Shutdown site website 2008. I found to my delight when I looked there that the event began here in Canada. The organizer Denis Bystrov is from Montreal. Together with another Montrealer, Ashutosh Rajeka, he has expanded upon last year's success and registered as a Quebec non-profit society to promote the theme of finding a more balanced life. Both career software developers, they describe themselves as "first hand victims of excessive use of computer related technology". So there is a lot of common ground between the issues that I look at here and those being addressed by events like this.

I plan to do a small video about my experience with last year's event. So stay tuned!

In the meantime, here again is the very funny video they made to introduce the concept for the first Shutdown Day, last year. It is called "Alternate Uses for Your Laptop".

Pirates of the Seabus

2008-02-27T10:20:00.018-08:00

In my last posting I stated my intention that I would try to be one of the ones to show up when the call went out for people to get out of their houses and do harmless goofy things in public spaces. I have been monitoring The Vancouver Public Space Network (VPSN) website for their next call to action. The idea for an event called "Pirates of the Seabus" was proposed, but then the expectation was for interested people like me to pass the word through our own groups. I asked four friends, but none of whom could make it. By the time Friday evening came, my energy was low, and I was on the verge of changing my mind. But my friend Juan, equally tired, had managed to get through his equally busy day and he still intended to get there. He was motivated by the fun he'd had at the Halloween Party on the Skytrain, and it had been his enthusiasm that made me so curious. As soon as I got into the atmosphere I got energized. I am practicing my pirate's "Arrrgh" with him in the final frame of the video below.

This blog's theme is about the issues that arise when seniors get stuck on the wrong side of the digital divide. So how does my participation in a flash mob fit in? I see two points of connection.

One of my fears, as a COABC, is about the possibility of social isolation for those who use computers extensively. I worry that online social networking might become a substitute for face-to-face encounters. But my fellow pirates, on the basis of information spread as a Facebook event, enthusiastically launched themselves off on an adventure in the real world. They played with identity using real, cheesy costumes, and interacted face-to-face with strangers. Here, I've seen a concrete example of how Internet based social networking can connect people into "First Life" (as opposed to "Second Life"). A key element in the success was spontaneity and low barriers to participation. Being tired at the end of the day is enough of an inhibitor! The timely spreading of the news needed instant, easy communication to make it worth our while.

A second COABC reflection upon my participation in this event is about my surprise today in finding that, as of the time I'm writing this, my video is the first photographic material to be uploaded to the VPSN Facebook site. I tend to assume that I am the least tech-savvy person in a group -"ten thumbs" technologically. But after my time as a media student, I am seeing that I have gained hard-won technical skills that might be setting me apart from other people who came of age before computers. I not only took a gig worth of material on my digital camera, but had facility in using it -- for example, switching to recording sound using the "sound memo" function when I didn't have enough memory for any more movies. In one of my classes last term, I was one of the few who passed the Apple Certification exam for level one in Final Cut Pro, the industry standard for editing movies on computers. I now am teaching seniors how to use digital cameras, and am getting quite good at helping them move from mystification into confidence.

Last night I put together the little movie you see above, and then uploaded it to YouTube and FaceBook and here on my blog. Since I had other commitments in the four days since the Pirate event, I was sure that I was going to be so late in contributing my material that everyone would yawn and say "been there, done that". People might still yawn, but it will be from boredom, not competition. To my surprise, not only have I produced a pretty okay movie, but I'm ahead of the crowd. Go figger!

Will there really be another Shutdown Day? Can you plan a viral event?

2008-02-02T22:36:00.000-08:00

Two postings here back in March and April 2007 recorded my excitement at the Internet-based Shutdown Day on March 24, 2007. A site encouraged people to turn off their computers, and do something else, just to see what it felt like. More than 50,000 people responded. My second article in April, entitled "Shutdown Day - the Day After" expressed disappointment that the majority of people reported that they "sex" and "computer use" as what they had done (sometimes in combination). Even at the time, I recognized that it might be a "generational thing" on my part to be so surprised. I myself had spent the day with a friend participating in a haiku writing contest. I've been checking the official site periodically and have been googling around, without finding activity yet on Shutdown Day 2008. I now am asking myself -- why does it need to happen again? Isn't it okay that it happened once, and that I had a day that got me thinking?

On Shutdown day there had been simultaneous flash mob pillow fights in a number of cities, including Vancouver. With very little lead time, a word-of-mouth announcement went out, boosted by emails, cell phones and messaging, inviting people to drop what they were doing and show up with concealed pillows. Although nobody called ME, the following video taken on the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery shows a very engaging alternative activity to being hunched over a computer. Two viral events in the same spirit on the same day. Coincidence? I think not. Repeatable? Maybe. Maybe not. I'm starting to get it that the nature of a viral event is that it gets set in motion, and then it is what it is.

Vancouver | Flash Mob Pillow Fight 2007, Feather Extravaganza from ardenstreet on Vimeo.

And now I am intrigued -- a flash mob wannabe, waiting for my first opportunity to check it out. Since last year I've become much more comfortable about both the short lead-up and quick wind-down of viral events. In fact, I've joined a Facebook group called "Flash Mob Vancouver". I am now poised to leap into that loop, and to be ready to pocket my palm pilot and go show up. Whether or not the Shutdown Day website fires up again and gives me a place to report, I can move on and apply that experience towards another step. I'm ready and waiting to shut down my computer and show up for the next "international day of fluff" -- 2008 World Wide Pillow Fight Club 3.0. And I'll report here.

"My Generation" - culture jamming by the Zimmers

2008-01-30T17:04:00.001-08:00

The following video, an ironic take on the song "My Generation" by the Who, is a music video initiated by the BBC in late May, 2007. It arose from participation by Peter (aka Geriatric1927) in programming about giving elders opportunity to have a voice in popular culture. A group of elders came together as "The Zimmer Band" and recorded in Abbey Road studios with production staff with excellent credentials in making pop music videos. The result is an energetic and effective piece of culture jamming.

Wikipedia defines Culture jamming as "the act of transforming mass media to produce commentary about itself, using the original medium's communication method. It is a form of public activism which is generally in opposition to commercialism, and the vectors of corporate image. The aim of culture jamming is to create a contrast between corporate or mass media images and the realities or perceived negative side of the corporation or media. This is done symbolically, with the "detournement" of pop iconography." In another section Wikipedia explains that in "detournement", an artist reuses elements of well-known media to create a new work with a different message, often one opposed to the original. "

Peter's culture jamming last spring in the widely marketed "My Generation" was the vehicle for public activism and fundraising around issues arising from social isolation among the elderly. The skillful music video used the obvious energy and physicality of the grooving seniors to make points against the stereotypes of rigidity and stuffiness.

In the video below "Now the Secret Can Be Told" he explains to the YouTube community about his relationship to the media and about the making the video. He makes no bones that this is a promotional clip looking for support for his activity which now is moving to a larger audience through broadcast television, mainstream music distribution and live performances. For him, Zimmers is serious play, engaging his creativity and fun with the band members, but with a social agenda reminiscent of the charity work of Bob Geldof with his concerts like "Band Aid" .

As uplifting as "My Generation" is, there is also an angry edge to the video where gesture and home-made signs get the simple message across. The "Culture Jamming" article in Wikipedia goes on to note that the "... intent differs from that of artistic appropriation (which is done for art's sake) and vandalism (where destruction or defacement is the primary goal), although its results are not always so easily distinguishable." The ritualistic smashing up of guitars at the end of "Generation", as directed by seasoned producers of other high-profile rock music videos is an appropriation of cultural cliches in order to comment on stereotypes of the elderly as inhibited and passive.

It seems that the experience recording at Abbey Road studios was a positive one. But once the band went on the promotional road, and were being examined by people who were not necessarily in the socially-engaged loop, were individual members at risk of being set up to be stereotyped in an even more negative way? Culture jamming has its roots in an idealistic desire to promote change, and so I make the assumption of a degree of innocence. "The Zimmers Backstage at Graham Norton" (a live talk show) leaves me wondering if the exuberance of the band members was getting exploited by the host, who seemed to be directing them into crossing the line into vandalism, for the sake of cheap laughs. Intitially I found his comments seemed responsive to the detournment they had initiated themselves. For example, he comments that their combined age of 3000 is just short of the Rolling Stones. But as the segment progressed, when he seems to hook into the underlying frustration that was also in the music video, I found myself increasingly uncomfortable with his mocking "us/them" asides to his audience.

However, would I have been patronizing too, if I could have intervened to protect Grace, the woman that he described as "you with the purply lilac top thing" from actually went for it beyond what seems to have been the host's intention, in trashing the backstage as he had directed? Where do my own stereotypes come in? I myself have been warned that if I leave the safety of dignified gestures when I appear in my own videos, I will be leaving myself open to ridicule and embarrassment. The fear of inadvertantly crossing the lines in a new setting is a powerful inhibitor to anyone. It has really slowed me down in putting myself out there on the Internet. I'd love to get some comments on the topic of taking these kinds of risks.

"Geriatric1927" starts the Silver Surfers campaign about computer access for the elderly

2008-01-28T22:40:00.000-08:00

In the sidebar on the right I have an earlier link to the work of "Geriatric1927" in the "YouTube videos for COABC's" section. That is the online name of Peter, an eighty-year old British senior whose channel, with over two million views, has earned him a place in the top twenty "Most Subscribed Directors of All Time". He talks about his own experience as an elder. He once said that he disapproves of people masking their identity on the Internet, so he used his birth year as part of his online name to ensure that his age would be crystal clear to young people interacting with him. Since I subscribed to him last year, he has increasingly focused in upon "intergenerational communication", and also upon the potential of the Internet to address mobility and isolation issues for his demographic.

This month he posted the video "Help for the Elderly", which he describes as: "A request for help in my attempt to introduce and encourage those elderly people who may be lonely and/or parted from their families to embrace the Internet and to reap the benefits even though they may be confused and frightened of all of the technologies". This week, he has started the blog Silver Surfers and made it the home page of his "Ask Geriatric" website.

One of the video responses is from Ben Arent, a product design student who is doing his final project upon this theme. He notes that this subject is "quite a current thing" and that there has been a recent new European Union directive, with a 43 million euro budget, about including the elderly in the information society. After Ben looked at my posting, he left a comment with the EU official website address "i2010" . A further google search found a central "thematic portal" site about the launch of the Europe-wide "Aging Well in the Information Society" research initiative. On that one, the amount quoted is a billion Euros.

No doubt part of Ben's motivation is social engagement, but he also sees an opportunity for himself in launching his professional career as a designer. He is planning a "social communication" product focused mainly on making email easier. In the video below he explains his design framework. He visualizes "negating the pain of adoption", then "imprinting" by marketing to this "undermarketed group" and "inciting" their engagement with his product. Here is a link to his website "Arent"

I'll be monitoring to see how this initiative unfolds.

Looking for kindred spirits on the Internet

2008-01-15T12:35:00.002-08:00

The rise of cell phones seems to be bringing about the fall of phone booths. The above 3-minute video "Disappeared Phone Booths" was inspired by a real incident of my life, when the Dean's Food Store pay phone, a few minutes walk from my house, was removed by the phone company instead of being repaired. I found that I was not the only person in my neighbourhood that missed it. This loss stimulated thought about the quiet reduction of the number of accessible phone booths throughout my daily travels, and I decided to do a playful video piece about my desire for rescue from this trend and post it to YouTube.

As you might be able to tell by my previous postings, vanishing pay phones are an accessibility issue. During my online research I felt validated in this interest when I found The Payphone Project, a website devoted to that subject. It is moderated by Mark Thomas, a New York photographer.

The message of this site has not always been one of a call to social action towards resisting a change. He began it as an art project publishing the telephone numbers of pay phones around the world. The idea was random conversations: one could dial a telephone booth in some distant corner of the world, with the hope that somebody passing by would answer the ringing phone. There are now few phones that are still set to accept incoming calls, possibly as a deterrent to the percieved use of pay phones for "off the radar" activity. But in the meantime Mark had gotten interested in the overall meaning and "look" of pay phones, and in how they are increasingly becoming a scarce resource for people who still want to use them. He is now observing the worldwide progression of this disappearance, and is collecting news stories and photos from around the world. He invites interested people to send material or links, so there is a community aspect to this essentially personal site.

I think this site is a good example of how a single person can sponsor a nexus for opinion on the Internet and, through the investment of time and effort, foster a resonating response regarding a subject of personal passion. Through forums like exhibitions, artists frequently put their creative activity out for public view without any guarantee of payoff, other than a possible gratification at being given attention. Thanks to user-friendly self-publishing umbrella sites on the Internet (such as Blogger and Youtube), an individual does not need to be granted the status of "professional" in order to self-publish text, photos and videos.

Recognizing that the essential payoff for the person doing a posting is the sense of being seen and heard, most distribution sites show information about how many "views" were made and usually provide an opportunity to open a posting to comments and rankings. There are simple software tools that can be embedded in a blog or website to give genera source information about the "hits".

Where have all the phonebooths gone?

2008-01-07T21:30:00.002-08:00

In the above one-minute video, my friend Cole tells the story of looking for a phone booth downtown. She brings up the issues that arise for those who aren't using cell phones, when pay phones are disappearing. She sees this as a safety issue as well as one of convenience. Many seniors resist using a cell phone because they have a high learning curve, the small keys are difficult to operate with fingers that aren't so nimble any more, and eyes that aren't so keen. Cell phone resisters of all ages explain that they are tired of being surprised by dead batteries and accounts that need refilling.

Cole says that Bob Dylan should launch a new protest song called "Where have all the phonebooths gone?". Is access to a public phone a civil right?

Coming to terms with YouTube as a construction site.

2007-12-16T11:11:00.000-08:00

I'm one of those people who came of age when the "home movie" look was due to the fact they were made at home, with few editing skills or tools. Also, out of privacy concerns, I confess I have been hesitant to put my contact information out there to a potential virtual community. I definitely need some friends who can show me around. Even though I'm very interested in YouTube and the Internet, I'm still pretty naive about the level of background construction that goes into material that appears there. I'm easily surprised.

Here is a video I found over the Christmas break on YouTube when I searched using the keywords "old" "people" and "technology", and that led me straight to the above 2 1/2 minute comedy video, entitled "Old People vs Technology". It gets the message across about the frustration that many people feel in the face of having to adapt to technological change. The bored young man dressed as a computer, coldly holding the older man at a distance, is a witty representation of access issues.

I wondered "Who initiated this video?", and fantasized that perhaps that young man onscreen is the grandchild of one of those frustrated seniors. The production values: editing, titles, a musical track and good lighting, led me to visualize that the people making the video are perhaps film students -- maybe this was a project for class. The spirit of playful empathy appealed to me. YouTube is supposed to be as much about the makers of the videos as it is about the videos themselves, so I decided to send the makers an email, to bond a bit and to explore what I see as common thematic ground. I wanted to ask how they came to choose that topic, and to ask if those elders who are so eloquently flailing around are in one of their families.

This cozy reading of the video was reframed when I used the contact information to go to a website. Turns out that it was created by a professional sketch comedy troupe in California, consisting of three young men who met while doing improv at university. Justin Michael (the young man in the cardboard box) actually is a film student, although his "comedic short videos" are already getting exposure. The camera work is by Dave Crabtree, a graduate who is now a professional. His bio says he is "a digital media preditor (yes, producer / editor) at FOX Reality. Yes, he works in reality TV."

The amateur look of the video is actually carefully constructed. Does that make "Old People vs Technology" a rip-off which ridicules seniors? No, I don't think so. All filmmaking is an effort to create an illusion. Much of the work on YouTube which looks shallow, awkward, low-tech and cheesy simply does not achieve illusion. The sense of being on the receiving end of a "gotcha" arises upon discovering a successful illusion -- a carefully constructed work being presented as a spontaneous one. Looking for these practical jokes has become a sophisticated game, and part of the sense of discovery that draws people into spending evenings poking around.

The makers "Old People vs Technology" are not out to dupe the viewer. They transparently give us a straight trail via the contact link back to their website Tremendousaur.

Contrast this approach with the 2006 YouTube hoax, Lonely Girl 15 (also known as LG15). Ostensibly, this was a series of off-the-cuff Vlogs (diary-style video blogs) made with a webcam by Bree, a sixteen-year old girl in her bedroom. A real, cheap, webcam was used, but the rest of the context was faked.

From the outset, a group of filmmakers and other professionals set out to mimic the vlogger look, and to deliberately hide their tracks. This "making of" photo, published in the New York Times after LG15 was "outed" by sleuthing fans, shows the crew working with the actors. Near the end, the site gained in popularity as the story line was superseded by a "search for Bree" which had the character of an online mystery game. The number of visits to the site skyrocketed as fans searched for elements in discord with the claim that this was a solo amateur project by a teenager. Finally a sting by some fans revealed that emails from "Bree" were originating in a Hollywood talent agency (which later signed up the "Creators" after they "came out" on the Jay Leno TV talk show). LG15 was instantly rebranded, and the story is proudly told on "LGpedia", a website that still plays with Internet cliches.

The Tremendousaurs also give us a behind-the-scenes look at the making of "Old People vs Technology" in the video "Old People Poses" which shows the auditions. So I guess those aren't Justin's grandparents. I'll ask him anyway, when I email them to let them know about this posting. Increasingly I'm getting it now that the construction of informality and a cheesy look is just part of swimming in the YouTube current -- part of the playfulness and art.

As the man behind the camera describes himself: "His days now lie in the hands of FOX, his nights with Eyestorm Productions, his bathroom breaks with OgMog, and his weekends with Tremendosaur. And when he sleeps, Dave dreams of the days when Jacob, Justin, and he used to regale hoards of cheery fans every Friday Night with Second Nature Improv. " Sure sounds to me like your basic, playful, arty nice guy ... somebody's grandson.

Historic computer commercials with John Cleese

2007-12-15T23:22:00.000-08:00

These two Monty Python-esque ad were made in the early eighties for the emerging British market for home computers. One of the themes of this series of ads was to position Compaq against IBM, the market leader at that time. I find these interesting because they seem to express the initial ambivalence that was common when personal computers were introduced. It seems to me that it has become politically incorrect to express this sort of resistance today.

This shows John Cleese comparing the new "Compaq 2 Desktop" with a dead fish.

This one describes what were then leading-edge features. As well as being funny, it struck me as an interesting historical snapshot.

Ready

2007-12-05T09:39:00.002-08:00

What's in that heavy-looking daypack? Lots of digital and electronic stuff that has accumulated over time, and which now seems indispensible. I stopped at a park bench one day and looked at what I felt I needed to feel "ready".Here is a one minute video.

Do "Help Lines" bog you down?

2007-07-15T13:42:00.001-07:00

Here is a 2 1/2 minute video piece, made with my friend Marlene Franks. A video pioneer, she is now working hard at gaining skills to begin to use her computer and digital camera as production tools. We get together periodically in front of her computer for me to give her support in using her Movie Maker software.

The video is her description of one of those "tripping over the tools" incidents. Yesterday she confessed that she hadn't done much since our last meeting, because she had gotten sidetracked, stuck and frustrated in trying to do what she thought would be a quick and simple bit of computer housekeeping: doing her annual update to her virus protection subscription. She describes how she worked persistently with call centre employees at a live Help Line. Even though she finally got the job done, she emerged feeling like a failure. I noticed that, weeks later, she was still showing a drop in energy, confidence and enthusiasm for working at her computer.

The online article "Customer Call Centres: Who Gets Your Worst Service Vote?" (published on the CityNews site, June 14, 2007) indicates that Marlene is not alone, and that computer support is rated the worst. People who came of age before computers often tell me that they emerge from the maze of a computer support phone call feeling stupid and inadequate. What is the answer? It would certainly have been shortsighted for Marlene to bail out on her effort to get updated virus protection. If it was hard getting support about downloading, that is nothing compared to the kind of help she would have needed had she experienced time-consuming devastation of a computer meltdown.

People who are just getting their feet wet with new technology need to hear that most people using computers feel -- at least on occasion -- like they are in over their heads. And they, too, often feel like they aren't getting what they need when they wave at the lifeguard. One reason that computer courses for seniors are so useful is that they provide a safe space where stories become funny once they are swapped. As I've watched my much younger peers in my media classes, I've noticed that they ask each other questions, and have a high tolerance for what I call "thrashing around". Asking a friend or family member to sit down with you at your own computer is one solution (as long as they promise not to grab the keyboard). But also, from personal experience, I have found that Call Centre employees will define a term or describe the spot where that key should be, once I admit that I'm lost. When all else fails, get out of the pool and, like Marlene, go out for a walk. Being in deep water is not the same as drowning.

Digital Photography for Seniors - by Ed Dunnett

2007-06-23T08:31:00.001-07:00

One of the interests I have developed, in the last three years, is to work with digital photography. In particular I am looking to produce different types of outputs particularly for people who are not inclined to use computers and high technology to gain access to photos. Seniors are often included in this group.

What this involves is taking digital photos of special events like weddings, important travel and graduations, doing them up into photomontages using image enhancing software and then selecting a number of output options for displaying these montages. This can include laminating the photomontages into placemats for the dinner table or preparing laminated posters for wall display. More recently I have tried preparing slideshows on dvds. These can be shown on television via a dvd player. To make things easier for the user I always choose the option of “no menu”. This means the dvd will play as soon as it is inserted in the dvd player and will continue until “the door is opened” again.
These seem to be working quite well. Although I still find that receiving a package of snaps by mail is still the most popular for my 90 year old father in law.
Ed Dunnett

It's only funny if it's true - Gmail April Fools Joke - by JoyfulCuriousity

2007-04-17T10:13:00.003-07:00

On April 1st when I logged into my Gmail account, I was surprised to see that they were offering a "paper archive" option for email.

The innovators at Gmail had suggested that they could "print all messages instantly and prepare them for delivery. Allow 2-4 business days for a parcel to arrive via post."

As with many pieces of information that pass across my eyes, I wondered briefly, "Who would use that?" and then I thought, "I'm sure they've done their market research."

It was only days later that I saw that Gmail posed the question "Have you seen our April Fools Joke?" The link directed users to the delicious marketing-pitch satire describing "Gmail Paper".

Talking with friends later, I discovered that many, many people print out messages in 14 point font for elderly relatives. They stuff the print outs in envelopes and send the messages through the post.

It's interesting to me that even though the printing of emails keeps the elderly relatives "in the loop", those relatives who cannot respond via email will have lost their voice in the conversation.

iPod ownership indicates more than mere affluence - by JoyfulCuriousity

2007-04-14T14:36:00.002-07:00

Nike shoes or Coach bags tell the world that you have money. iPods tell the world that you own technology.

When I gave my spouse an iPod for her birthday last December, we were amazed at the assumptions that had been made about our comfort with technology. The iPod video comes "plug and play" without an instruction manual; Apple assumes that the user already knows how to turn on and off the iPod and to navigate through the menus.

Beyond the knowledge of how to use an iPod, there is an impressive list of what you need to own in order to operate and customize the iPod.

To run an iPod you require a computer on which you have your own identity (either you're the only user or you have login) and you need a good internet connection. iTunes (which is used to download files and upload them on the iPod) is user-specific. If one owns a PC (not a Mac), before using an iPod for the first time, one has to download iTunes onto their computer from the Apple site. This means that one couldn't use the computer at the public library to maintain, or even initialize, their iPod.

The iPod is a lovely and addictive machine The designers created such an intuitive device that after the first little while of using it, the iPod seemingly disappears and the user is left with the joy of listening to music, learning from lectures, or watching home-made lego videos.

But I wonder who is left out from the iRevolution? I can imagine that beyond separating rich from poor, the iPod separates technologically-comfortable (and endowed) from not.

Note: in the sparse iPod literature that comes with the machine, there is no article before "iPod" - not "an" or "the" or even "your". Is this to make iPod friendly, like a pet or a previously-named Cabbage Patch doll? Or did Apple drop their articles to make their documents less wordy and more accessible to non-English speakers?

Shutdown Day site -- the morning after

2007-04-11T07:02:00.000-07:00

I'm disappointed at how the Shutdown Day site has devolved into much more static forms. The home page uses typography to show the often crude and macho claims that the day was spent on the computer and/or engaged in exotic sex. I had been very much taken with the energy of the "Shutdown Day" site in the runup to March 24. It was driven by the device of an artificially created deadline, and some interesting graphic representations of statistics about participation levels, which stimulated more participation. It was engagingly "sticky" to use a phrase from the book "Tipping Point". In comparison to that excitement, the commitment, even on the part of the people who put the site up there, seems to have evaporated once the day came and went. Now the site seems to be drifting like a satellite that has run out of fuel.

I was on the verge of deleting the link to the Shutdown Day site in the sidebar on the right, but then I realized that my reaction might be a generation thing, and that I need to take a look at what is triggering me both positively and negatively. The site took a younger, tech-savvy approach which in the end seems shallow to me. Deleting the link seems like going into denial. The site got 50,000 people engaged enough to go online and, not only comment, but also to participate. Does it matter that the interest was so short-lived? I need to come to terms with the short attention spans and ephemerality of work produced for the internet. Can I live with that as an artist? If I can't, can I take my own advice and "take what I want and leave the rest"?

I'm reflecting a lot about how I, as a socially engaged artist, can make a place for myself on the internet which will find its audience, and continue to hold it. My theme of balancing technology with life is very similar to the one being promoted by the Shutdown Day people. I am looking for ways of expressing my message in a way that engages an audience of peers? The lack of comments here shows that I could learn a lot about "stickiness" from Shutdown Day.

There is a "support Shutdown Day" area, suggesting that people who want to get involved could donate to "the National Laptop Foundation" which recycles computers to people who can't afford them, including seniors. When it showed up on the Friday night I thought it was a puzzling detour from the main event. Now I'm still intrigued at what seems to be an effort to go beyond a one-day event. I'll check it out and let you know.

Shutdown Day - March 24, 2007

2007-03-21T21:31:00.001-07:00

The following introduction proposes a concept which may not seem so radical to COABC's: "It is obvious that people would find life extremely difficult without computers, maybe even impossible. If they disappeared for just one day, would we be able to cope? Be a part of one of the biggest global experiments ever to take place on the internet. The idea behind the experiment is to find out how many people can go without a computer for one whole day, and what will happen if we all participate! Shutdown your computer on this day and find out! Can you survive for 24 hours without your computer?"

In sending out my emails telling people about this site, I wrongly called it "Web Shutdown Day" instead of "Shutdown Day". Big difference. This site, responding to the growing fatigue felt by humans in constant interface with computers, does not intend to shut the whole web down -- even for a day. It looks for simple, small-scale, personal responses by individuals to their own computer use. Like "Buy Nothing Day", this is an opportunity to consciously reflect on our habits, reframing individual behaviour into a community-action context. The site suggests "Turn your computer off. Do something else for one day, then come back and report what happened."

I took the 24-hour pledge on Shutdown Day website along with over 51,000 other people who clicked "I can" (and 8,000 people who confessed "I can't".

The above cheerful and funny video "Alternate Uses for Your Laptop" shows that there is hope for all those sons who disappeared into the basement with their computers. Also intriguing are the written and video responses to the idea of turning the computers off. Maybe this is going to be the next cool thing to do!

When I'm Bored, by Alice

2007-03-13T09:59:00.000-07:00

Here is Alice, who has, in my opinion, done a very creative job of making use of aspects of the internet. Could you describe some ways you use your computer?

I mostly use it for playing Solitaire. I use the email to send messages to family and friends. And sometimes I sit down and get lost in it, and try to find my way back.

What do you use to help you figure out how to use your computer?

When I first got a computer, I had a book with illustrations of how to do calendars and writing paper, which I used to make for everybody. Now my monitor went on the hummer, and I got a new one, and the book I used is obsolete. My daughter, Becky, says they don't have books like that anymore for new computers. I really miss that part.

How does playing Solitaire fit into the rest of your life?

I find it very relaxing. For one thing, sometimes I'm just bored, and the TV is lousy, and then I go play Solitaire for awhile. I get tired with that if I can't win. It depends on my moods. And I hope and pray that it will improve my memory! But I don't know about that, whether it does or not. But it won't make it worse anyway. We joke about "the Golden Years"!

Then of course the emails. I get lots of emails. Then I try to take care of that.

What kind of emails do you get?

All kinds. I have a lot of friends who send me emails. Lots of them are funny. Some are very touching. And some of them... I wish they'd kept them.

Are a lot your emails forwarded items likes poems?

Yeah. I don't mind the poems and stuff -- and the funny things.

Do you get personal emails from people that are just directed to you? Like letters?

Not really letters. My daughters send emails to keep me up to date and see how we are doing.

So they are short like telegrams used to be?

Yeah. And my son, I get short emails, but not very often. But no letters. He'll phone more often.

I notice that your picture which appears on the screen when the computer is not in use is a family photo. Tell me about that.

That's my granddaughter. She works in Campbell River at a water plant. When she first went up there she caught all these fish and sent a picture of herself to me. And somehow or other my daughter Becky made up that screensaver for me. I don't know how she did it.

To wind up, what would you say to other seniors about computers?

Well I like computers. They are just a filler. Sometimes you don't know what you want to do. Then you can play Solitaire and think about things. Sometimes you just want to be in a different world, and not have to think about cooking or something.

My White Rock Bench, by Fred

2007-03-12T10:39:00.001-07:00

Dad, could you tell us how you got your bench?

Well, during my years in White Rock they were offering to let you have a bench of your own along the waterfront. And I was happy to buy my bench. The bench was made of BC cedar and obviously could stand the test of time. So I composed a plaque to go on my bench, thinking ahead to the day when I would be long gone to my great reward. So it was a good sized plaque, capable of being turned over and used as a memorial to me. As it's turned out, the plaque is not capable of taking seven names of my family, so they'll need a new plaque. In the meantime it is serving a useful purpose in that it is offering a wonderful viewpoint of the pier and its activities.

Last fall, you wrote me to ask me to visit the bench. Could you expand on what my "mission" was?

Your mission was to see if it was still there. I was aware of the fact that they had relocated it, but I was sure they did a good job, as it was a prime location for getting a constant flow of use.

I took along my digital camera so I could print out photos to mail and show you the bench, and also have a bit of fun with the project by stringing the images together into a short movie. It was a surprise gift - and a surprise to me how hard it was to find a way of showing you the movie! Finally we put it up on YouTube, and now you don't need any other equipment to play it. How did it go when I showed you the movie up on the internet?

Well I was surprised to find the bench had taken on a new dimension.

We are planning now to make another movie. Please tell us about that one

The latest development is that I am planning to have my cremation "dust" scattered in a small bird sanctuary on the outskirts of White Rock. While living in the area I had visited this bird sanctuary on numerous occasions, finding new flocks of migrating birds enjoying the rest period along the river. They had also built a tower viewpoint overlooking a bend in the river, and it appeared ideal for an all weather spot to scatter my ashes to the winds.

And in that same letter, you had also given me a second mission of finding that spot with the tower, and sent me a map with an "x" marking the spot. It felt like a treasure hunt! I was very glad that you are still around when I discovered a map in the picnic ground that showed not one but three towers! I didn't know if I had found the right one. But I could send you a printout of a photo of that map, so you could identify the right tower! And as it turns out, I was at the wrong one!
Is it useful to be able to see these images of the places that are important to you and to tell us about the meaning?

This is the time to do it, as I approach my 90th birthday. And I have been seriously studying all the aspects of my memorial wishes. First of all I would like our service of remembrance at my church here. However for the actual disposal of my ashes, I wish to have them distributed in the above location near White Rock. I have it on very good authority that it is legal to do this, providing you make sure that the ashes go into the WIND.

So is it useful to be able to plan with us, and work from pictures so that those of us who will be making your last wishes come true can be sure that we doing it right?

Yes. I am very surprised that there are now three towers to choose from! However my original choice is still valid.

And with your help via the photos and video, all seven of us can be feeling like we are sharing your vision of that event. And it is wonderful to be able to talk about this with you, and even have a few laughs.

Subsequent notes about the video "Fred's Spot"

After Dad confirmed the right tower, I went back to the place and made a small one and a half minute video which I edited in iMovie with a soundtrack of a favorite song off a CD. I loaded it up to YouTube. I felt that I was a success when both my sisters reported that they cried when they saw it. And my brother, who has accepted the role of "ash scatterer" is relieved.

I found this an interesting experience with situating myself to the lines between "public" and "private" on YouTube. Initially kept it private and just sent links out to my immediate family. Later, with Dad's permission after his interview for this blog, I changed the permission to "public" so that I could insert it here. a lot of thought, I wrote a rather vague description on YouTube, so that viewers who are uninvolved in my family's story would only know that this is my Dad's favorite spot, but not why. However I am comfortable showing it here, in my blog, where viewers have a context. I would welcome comments and stories about choices made in this regard.

YouTube for COABC's

2007-03-08T17:30:00.000-08:00

In my posting about Time's "Person of the Year" I got into a discussion about YouTube". Since then I've been checking it out, looking specifically for videos either made by COABC's (people who came of age before computers), or of interest to people of any age, who have an ambivalent relationship with new technology.

A real selling point of YouTube for me is that you don't need to have any special viewing software loaded on your own computer, to pay, or to be a member, to be able to view videos there. So I've started a new section on the right called "YouTube for COABC's". Please feel free to use the comments to suggest other ones you have enjoyed.

To see the video illustrated at the left, click on this link for "Introducing the Book"

Also, here is a link to "Geriatric 1927" which is the "channel" of an 80 year old man. His videos about his life have made him the seventh most subscribed on YouTube.

Digital still photos can be animated

2007-02-22T16:37:00.000-08:00

There are some simple digital cameras which don't make videos. But often they have a function called "continuous" or "burst" which allows you to take a very quick series of photos (for example, 9 shots taken one second apart). This is intended to make it possible to take shots of action (for example, children playing) and have a set of choices of the same scene. These clusters can be strung together, using movie editing software that often comes as part of our computer package. PC's often have "Movie Maker" and Macs have "I-Movie". Even without a sound capability, you can get a look like an early silent movie. I used an older digital camera to document a class event where we spent the day doing live programming on the low-powered radio station of my art school. Here is a link to a few seconds of a group of us "jamming" - using various objects, including a sewing machine, as drums. I was able to create an illusion of movement, and hopefully people would imagine what it sounded like!

Here is the link to see the animation of the live radio performance -- silent drumming.

Library site helps Book Clubs

2007-02-18T22:29:00.000-08:00

I'll confess that, for relaxation, one of my favorite activities is sitting down with a book. I am a member of a book club that saves money for its members by using the library. The person who will be the next host brings three choices from the library to the meeting for us to browse the real thing.
For my research I look at the suggestions in the Vancouver library's website section called "the Book Club". We only recommend books that have an adequate number of copies, and the catalogue entry gives me that status. When the group decides the next title, each of us logs on to the library catalogue to place a hold or to get a copy delivered to the most convenient branch. The catalogue will also tell you where there are copies sitting on the shelves, in case you left it till the last minute, and need to start reading fast to be ready for the meeting! The user has a choice of either being phoned by a very robotic sounding message, or recieving automated email communications from the library. I prefer the email, because there is another service included where you get a couple of days warning if a book is going to be overdue, with a link right there to my library account where I can renew it before I forget.

Here is a link to the Vancouver Public Library catalogue

Photo of the Central Branch with permission from the Vancouver Public Library website.

Marge Lam's offline relationship

2007-02-08T14:19:00.000-08:00

Five reasons I love about being offline:

In the evening -- instead of staring into a screen for hours on end looking at all the different clogs I could purchase from all over the world -- I can draw patterns, listen to "Between the Covers" on CBC while I'm doing stretches, and take extra-long hot baths.
I get to talk to a person when ordering my Spud groceries, and ask things like "are Gone Crackers really worth $6.50 a box?" and my very friendly Spud employee says "Yes. The packaging's awful, but the crackers are fantastic." Now I'm addicted to Gone Crackers.
I've noticed at least ten more bird species right outside my window.
It's a good excuse when I miss deadlines.
I feel better. My body feels better.

Five reasons I miss about being offline:

I probably communicate 30% less than I did when I was online. But I think the quality of my life has improved.
I show up at meetings and I don't have the agenda.
Sometimes it's awkward when networking because people don't do phone anymore.
I can't access information as quickly as I would like to.
It makes me feel disabled.

Nancy invited me onto her blog. I met her through an internship programme with the Art Health and Seniors Project.

Thank you, Nancy, for being such a great transcriber. I can't use my arms to do a lot of things I used to do because of a repetitive strain injury from work. That's why I've been offline.

"Happy Birthday" bounces off satellites

2007-02-04T15:14:00.000-08:00

Conference calls don't need to be limited to business use when access to user-friendly technology is available free of charge. Last week, on my mother's 84th birthday, she sat in her wheelchair in Calgary while my sister Judi helped her chat with her extended family. Besides the calls being placed from all over Western Canada, one grandchild stood in a bathing suit at a phone booth on a beach in New Zealand, another phoned from a booth in Mexico, while my brother Steve in Africa phoned at 3:30 in the morning, his time. My role was to lead the group in singing "Happy Birthday". Despite my countdown and an "all together now", the song got mashed as each of us speeded up or slowed down, trying to compensate for the delays. Mom got the point, anyway.

We seven siblings use email to communicate with each other, but neither of our parents use computers. My sister Janet went to a website to set our family's conference call account after she used it in her organization, and found there were no catches or hidden costs. The only down-side is that cell phone people have to use a land line (hence all the phone booths). Even with fourteen people, the sound quality was good after we all figured out how to mute ourselves when we weren't talking. We were also able to have a free recording made, and each of us can phone up and listen until it gets overwritten by our next taped call. I've put a link to their website in the section on the right.

Last night I went over to the house of a friend in order to make a permanent copy of that recording using a tape recorder connected to the jack on her extension phone. The website offers a way of downloading the sound file to a computer, which will be my next challenge. In the meantime, I'm glad to know that I have a cassette tucked in a drawer of those relaxed voices and cacaphonous song.

With our parents so old, and in the light of their increasing health problems, the tone of the next recording could easily be very different. We plan to use conference calling regularly -- showing up together for our parents during difficult times, as well as for celebrations.

Here is the link to the site which offers free conference calls.

Time Magazine's "Person of the Year". Is that ME?

2007-02-01T20:47:00.000-08:00

On Time Magazine’s cover for their “Person of the Year 2006", the computer screen is a mirror. The caption says “You. Yes, you. You control the Information Age. Welcome to your world.” My hunch is that many people looked into that piece of mylar on the magazine cover and did not see themselves reflected there. The story is “about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before” on "Web 2.0". Time asks “Seriously, who actually sits down after a long day at work and says ‘I’m going to turn on my computer and make a movie starring my pet Iguana?' ... Who has that time and that energy and that passion?" and answers: "You do." Who? Me?

Here is the entire Time article. It is seventeen pages, with lots of pictures. Since it is in a format called "PDF", you need to have a software on your computer to read it. In case you don't have it yet, here is a link for a free Adobe Reader download of the latest version.

Increasingly, I am finding that sort of time, energy and passion. But, for me, the "what" often gets frustratingly tangled up in the "how". My son has advised that I avoid the term "cyberspace", but my efforts to hoist my pieces up there take a degree of grinding which mystifies him. After my return to art school after the age of fifty, I switched my studies away from my comfort zone in visual art and into digital communications media such as the Internet. I am convinced that, like it or not, that is the leading edge in art. But I confess that my reaction is often "not". Many of us who came of age before computers have worried about losing our children to computer "twitch games". We also fear losing ourselves, if we were to start to play with computers. Often when we do experiment for fun, we find ourselves spending our precious time thrashing around, bogged down in technology and jargon. Who wants to blog tonight if we aren't having fun, when we know that tomorrow we have to face our overstuffed inbox at work?

I felt relief when I heard one of my teachers respond to a query about his absence on the school's online forum with "I've got a life". Comments such as that foster an atmosphere where both artists and non-artists can make choices about using computers for creative activity. The point is to pick the elements of the recreational computer world that actually reflect and nourish our own particular -- maybe sort of boring -- lives.

We may not be motivated enough to tolerate a steep learning curve in order to make a movie about our iguana, but if properly encouraged, we might spend an evening in the YouTube site, figuring out how to post a home video of our child playing on the beach. In the links section on the right you can see just such a clip, posted by my brother, Steve. I hadn't visited YouTube until I got that link, and when I checked it out, I was intrigued at its potential to be useful to people in my own demographic. The trouble with buying a digital video camera is that it is cumbersome to show the results to people who are not there sitting on our sofa. YouTube is free of charge to upload, no special software or registration is required to view, and a direct link to your video can easily be emailed to friends and family. Steve's clip "Korkobite Beach" has 55 views, while below it,"The Wedge" clocked 4,258. Who cares? There are 138,999 videos in that category, and room for everybody.

The fact that Steve playfully engages me, as part of his "community" by emailing me his YouTube link, makes me feel that maybe Time magazine did get it right. The main payoff for Steve and his son was playing together in the surf, and the main payoff for me is to feel connected to them. I am now using some of that life I have to play on my computer, and it is especially sweet if my son keeps me company. Sure, its better on a boogie board. But gazing into that monitor does not doom us to becoming lost in narcissism.

Korkobite Beach

TV Guide Magazine no longer on paper. Who cares?

2007-01-11T11:06:00.000-08:00

In late October 2006, TV Guide announced that the Canadian edition of the print magazine would be discontinued. Readers of the magazine are now expected to fire it up on their computers, and view the free online version on the Internet. Reuters quotes Jamie Hubbard, editor of Canada's TV Guide: "The way the universe -- and let's be honest, a younger universe -- is getting their information -- has changed dramatically in the last five years, never mind 30 years ago."

Here is a link to the Canadian TV Guide online edition

The move was no doubt necessary for economic survival. Reuters points out that, after 50 years of publication, circulation had dropped in four years from 430,000 to 243,000.

But, as Michael Adams, curator at Toronto's MZTV Museum of Television, told Reuters: "Coffee tables will miss it. The generation that still picks up the TV Guide was the generation that grew up with rabbit-ear antennas".

Discussions in blogs echo this concern about marginalization of users. In "cyberjournalist.net" C. Thomas commented "I'm very disappointed ... My mother doesn't even know how to use a computer. I on the other hand only use the one at work or library." And another person anonymously posted "My grandmother is confused to hell right now wondering how she is going to find out what is on TV this week. I didn't even know this was true until I went to 3 stores trying to get her a TV Guide ... Online is fine for this generation, but what about all the confused elderly without computers?" And Anne commented "...for many older and elderly people (who in fact make up approximately 20 percent of Canada's viewing public) this comes as a huge detriment to their TV viewing pleasure ... Kudos to your brainless ideas". For more commentary on this blog, click Cyberjournalist.net

Frankly, I never bought TV Guide, even years ago when I was still hooked up to broadcast TV. To me, that little magazine with some celebrity on the cover was just one more superficial bit of "here today, gone tomorrow" parked in the impulse buy zone at the checkouts. I went looking for one of them to scan and illustrate this posting, but I'm too late. Now it is an artifact in the Canadian Museum of Television. Nonetheless, it disturbs me that this tool, which facilitated the navigation of the increasingly complex choices viewers need to make to use their TV watching time, is now restricted to people comfortable with computers, and who have one close to their TV.

What do you think? Please let us know by clicking on the blue word "comments" on the lower right of this article. In my links section on the right, there is a section which gives you a link to the TV Guide online site, the Reuters article, and the blog quoted above.

Blog improves outreach of a church

2006-12-03T23:12:00.000-08:00

As a group project for a course at Emily Carr, I helped to update the website for a very small congregation called "Christ Alive Community Church" in the West End of Vancouver.

We came into contact with the church through one of the members of our group, an exchange student from Holland, who had found the church with Google when she first arrived and was looking for a Sunday night traditional service. She was welcomed by the tiny congregation, but it was apparent that they needed to improve their outreach in order to survive.

Our goal was a simple appearance, better navigation, easy updating, and increased visibility on the internet to people from outside Vancouver. On a local level the people in the church are involved in community service projects, but the ministry also has an important role as a location where same-sex couples from all over the world can come to be legally wed in a traditonal worship service.

We didn't tell the pastor we were giving him a "blog" until we could show him our final product, since many people think that they are only for teenagers reporting on last night's party. He was very pleased with the results.

Here is a link to the site of Christ Alive Community Church

Digital cameras and your life

2006-11-30T07:31:00.000-08:00

Digital cameras let you review and delete photos immediately, meaning that you can catch unique moments and save money on processing. Cameras that use film require a waiting time to see the results, and often your subject (or vacation) is long gone before you see if you need to retake any shots. We all have drawers or cardboard boxes in storage of envelopes full of photo prints that we paid for but which didn't turn out.

I've just finished giving three workshops in using digital cameras to seniors who are in recovery from strokes. This was part of the "Lines of Life" project, offered by the City of Vancouver. I found people eager to learn, but anxious about how complex and delicate the entry-level cameras would be. Confidence rose after we repeated "camera calisthenics"(turning it on, taking shots, reviewing, and deleting)as a warmup every session. It was very exciting to see how much people enjoyed themselves. Our primary goal was to give people a useful skill, but we also got some interesting photos and text. Here is a link to their online exhibition.

Lines of Life Project

One thing I learned for myself was that I wanted some of those features I was teaching on my own camera! I especially wanted to be able to take video. I am impressed at how people can now afford to be carrying around the tool to record the stories of their daily lives (or even news events they happen to witness). I took my new camera to a two-day 50th birthday party and, using the software that came with the camera, edited the small movie clips and still photos together into a 3 1/2 minute piece called "Sisters" which has a storyline about the interconnectedness of women. The first night, Sarah read us a story that inspired her, so I took portraits of her with each friend, and had them read a bit of the story as a voiceover. Many digital cameras record digital audio now, as part of their video function. Many have the option of recording a "sound memo" for verbal notes about still images.

Here is a link to the movie. Sisters

I'm an art student and have access to lots of great equipment, but only until I graduate. It is a relief to me to know that I can still put my content and stories out there with consumer-level tools. Also, increasingly my interest is in assisting people to take control of their own image-making -- so I'm all excited about showing how you can produce your own videos without having to be able to afford video cameras and editing equipment.

Problems learning the computer

2006-11-12T16:56:00.000-08:00

When Linda, the author of the blog Fiddlehead Farm Memoirs, made the comment that "Learning computers is way harder than learning how to milk a goat", I asked her to write down some reflections. Please feel free to add your observations by clicking on "comments" (the underlined blue phrase at the end).

"At my age of 68 I am finding several challenges working on a computer. One has to ask at some point 'Do the benefits outweigh the frustrations?'

There is no doubt that the information of the world is at ones fingertips. The question is at what price do you pay? It is easy now to stay in contact with friends. BUT does it take the place of face to face talking and visiting? My grandson age 16 says his best friend lives in New Jersey. He also may be his only friend simply because he spends so much time on the computer he doesn't have time to develop other relationships. That is sad and not for me.

All of our brains learn in different ways.The failures of our school systems have certainly proven this. Many of us see in pictures and or learn experientially.

I do not want to lead a sedentary life . At my age I need to get more exercise not less. It is also important not to increase my stress level. There is nothing more frustrating than a crashed computer, or one you can not figure out.

Every individual needs to decide for himself just how much this tool should control his life."

A blog provides a place for reconnection and story collection

2006-10-02T16:56:00.000-07:00

In an email with the subject line "Linda with a blog" to potential contributers, the former owner of Fiddlehead Farm begins: "It has taken my retirement to be able to begin to learn my way around a computer. This form of communication is not my favorite. I did realize that if I wanted to reconnect with the travellers to fiddlehead the only way I could do it was through the internet."

The Fiddlehead Farm Memoirs blog is an ongoing collaboration between myself and Linda S. She is a person who, for philosophical and practical reasons, is very careful about how much of her time and energy she invests in communication which isn't face to face. Over a thirty year period, Linda created instant community for hundreds of young people, from students to international travelers, at a unique place in the rainforest near Powell River, BC.

The history of Fiddlehead is, I believe, a very strong narrative in its own right. Fiddlehead was always a place of community. From a sixties commune, it evolved into an alternative school for "at-risk" teens in the seventies, and then into a youth hostel that was quietly famous among backpackers. I became a regular visitor in the early nineties, just before the secret of Fiddlehead got out. For example, Vancouver Magazine, in its "Nirvana Report" -- linked to Linda's blog -- revealed to the BC locals that it was a place "which will loofah the cynicism out of the most hardened urbanite".

Linda retired in 2003, and sold Fiddlehead to a man who promised to continue to run it as an eco-recreational place: a horse-riding retreat. Instead, he clearcut the forest and burned the handmade buildings. It took Linda years to get over the shock. But last June, at a Fiddlehead reunion, it was clear to me that she had recovered and was ready to think outside the box.

We spent time together in July, scanning her photos, while she clarified three objectives. First, she wanted to find a way to reconnect with individuals who still consider their time at Fiddlehead as having been an important part of their personal history, but whose physical addresses were lost when the logbook was burned in 2003. She also wants to collect stories and photos about the Farm from many points of view, since she has already been approached by a filmmaker and by someone who would like to help her do a book. Finally, she wants to preserve her own aging photographs, and create a digital archive of photos from diverse collections.

Over the rest of the summer, Linda not only opened her first email account, but also launched the Fiddlehead Memoirs blog. Here is the link to her blog.

Fiddlehead Farm Memoirs

Old documents preserved by scanning and burning to a CD

2006-10-01T21:36:00.000-07:00

Over the summer of 2006, I taught my friend Nancy H. how to use the scanner and a cd burner at my art school so that she could create a digital copy of a very old photo/handwritten family tree archive. She is a descendent of the gentleman above, who, on May 10, 1907, used a timer and a glass-plate camera to make a portrait of himself working into the night on his labour of love.

One hundred years later, the wet black ink we see in that old photo is brown, the paper and photos brittle and fading. Nancy's objective was to have a copy for preservation and safety, and also to be able to provide the images in digitized form to another family member who is writing a history book. That project is now completed with her objectives achieved.