Finally!
I'm pretty capable when it comes to technology. As a musician, well, more aptly, a desktop musician, I constantly have to stay with the curve. Staying ahead of it is another matter, entirely.
I think I'm at a funny age. I'm old enough not to have spent time playing a Nintendo when I was a child and not having used the web and email for homework in school. But I'm young enough that I did grow up playing with my Atari 2600 and learned the basics of BASIC.
Many people a few years older than me have a hard time with Outlook Express and web browsers. Most who are younger, however, can jump on the newest technical bandwagon - whether it be RSS feeds or viral video - with no problem at all. Me? I'm stuck in the middle. I find that I do things the way I've done them for years.
While Amanda uses the funky word-guessing thing on her phone when sending a text message, I spend the time to type everything out completely - yep, punctuation and all. A word like "high" can be really annoying because it uses the same key for each letter, so I have to wait for each letter choice to "stick" and for the cursor to move forward before I can go to the next letter. Amanda uses Page Flakes for a ton of RSS feeds as well as the tabs in IE7 (she'd used them already in Firefox). Even though I have IE7, I still open a new instance of the browser for each location I go to. And RSS? I really haven't got a clue!
As for desktop music, I do OK. I have the latest versions of my sequencer (SONAR) and my notator (FINALE). I have some pretty up to date samples and two really nice keyboards. But I don't use ACID loops (they've been around since the late 90s) or softsynths (likewise).
Why is this? Although I could certainly be accused in many cases of being old-fart-like, that's not the case here. I think it just takes me longer to learn, or at least get used to, something new. It's an investment in time I'm, more often than not, not willing to make. It's too bad, too. All of these things would make me more efficient and productive. And in the case of the music, it'd probably sound better.
Usually, if I can see that it's a really effective technology I'll ultimately come around.
Please feel free to leave any comments you'd like. But don't expect me to reply via RSS, text message, or any other suitably savvy technique!
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1 comment:
I read the post via Pageflakes - hah!
I think it has a lot to do with your mindset. My generation, to some extent the generation before me, and EVERYONE in the generations after me (I'm actually teaching some of them and they're 8 - yikes!) are willing to jump in and figure things out. I never read the directions, I just tried to answer the questions in a logical way. While this got me into trouble on the SATs, with technology, it's the way to go (for me, at least).
Anyway, I could be wrong. Just my opinion.
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