Welcome

Welcome to Settlements, Communities and Old Dawgs.

This blog is an experiment in the use of computer moderated communications technology. Here I will post some reflections on my experience with information concerning social networking, instant messaging, blogging and other internet related resources and my experience with their use.

I will be honest, I absolutely hate this technology. Not because it is not useful but because it is not intuitive. I have just spent hours composing a welcome and an introduction to this blog so it appeared to be something other than an exercise to satisfy an assignment. 200 words. I had it all finished but not posted because I wanted to see that others would be able to comment and how that was handled. So I selected the comment moderation tab, saw what was there and clicked the return arrow. Everything dissappeared and no effort of mine could find a way to recover what had been written. I noticed as I typed the draft of the post that the save now button would flash and I assumed that my draft was automatically being saved as I typed. If it was I was not able to find a place to recover what I had lost. I was also frustrated that there were no tools that allowed me to cut and paste so I could avoid retyping.

As I composed the original post I would look at preview to see how my post would appear when completed and saw that spaces I left between paragraphs did not show up in the preview. What I saw in the preview was one long block of type.

This is a second attempt at blogging. While I have occasionally read blogs in search of someone's experience in the use of new computer hardware or service, I have not commented or gotten involved in the activity of blogging. I am a classic lurker.

I do not like to waste time or to work twice. My experience now and in the past reinforces the notion that I do not need this technology as part of my life experience. The irritation and the frustration is that I understand that society is changing in the way it socializes and the way it communicates. I have a smartphone with a data plan but rarely use it to access the internet. Two of four children and their spouses have smartphones that they constantly check for email and text messages and a host of other activities. I had purposed to purchase an iPhone 4 and make a concentrated effort at joining the world of cyberspace because I understand the advantages of community and working cooperatively. I see how technology makes it possible for those spread across the planet to share and communicate both for fun and professionally. But my experience with this single activity makes me say "just forget it". I would rather do something I know how to do and perfect those skills than learn something I have gotten along without and have not been convinced that it is something I must really learn for a fuller life. My life is full enough. I have more to do than time to get it done so when time is at a premium, learning is not fun when I know that learning is not only a process of errors but making mistakes and learning how to correct them is the only way to learn effectively.