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21 January , 2002
WRESTLING
WITH TECHNOLOGY
Last night I won a hard-fought battle. It took me several days, but I was finally victorious. I was proud. I was happy. I had wrestled the computer into submission.
| Asian Americans adopted the Internet earlier than other groups, with 80 percent of Internet users reporting they have been online for two years or more. |
Back when I used Apple computers, I got pretty good at fighting my Macs - after a few years I could take apart and reassemble either the computer or its system without feeling frightened or nervous. Since I've been using Windows-based computers, it's been tougher to keep them in line, since they seem so much more unnecessarily complicated. But even then, I've gotten to know a lot about how PCs work, and feel comfortable with them - most of the time.
The battle I won last night was one I had never fought before. With help of Erin's uncle, Steve Nitta, we installed a new CD burner and a new, large hard drive in our desktop computer. In essence, we were using the box for the computer and making it a brand-new, much-improved machine. I had taken the box apart before, but never to install such key components. Uncle Steve did the hard part and I watched with awe as he reached in and plugged and unplugged cables with ease. Watching him work, I realized a computer -- even a Windows machine -- is not much more than a handful of separate parts just assembled together to do a job. Like a stereo system, the confusing part is simply keeping everything connected correctly.
But after the components were installed, I had a problem with a piece of software I tried to load onto the new hard drive. So, after waiting a couple of days, I prepared to wrestle the damned thing. I wrestled with it again, long into the night. This time, I was able to set up the new hard drive, load Windows 98 and all the software, and it worked!
Victory tasted sweet.
You might find yourself thinking that since I'm Asian, I'm a natural with computers and other gadgets. The prevailing stereotype about Asians and technology has some truth to it. A recent survey, a part of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, found that seven out of ten Asian Americans use the Internet every day - far more than any other ethnic group in the US -- and that Asians in general were early adopters of the Internet.
Three-fourths of adult Asian Americans have used the Internet, the study found, compared with 58 percent of adult Caucasians, 50 percent of adult Hispanics, and 43 percent of African-American adults.
Asian Americans also adopted the Internet earlier than other groups, the study found, with 80 percent of Internet users reporting they have been online for two years or more. By contrast, 69 percent of white Internet users, 59 percent of Hispanics, and 56 percent of African-American Internet users have been online for two years or more.
It's true that I discovered the Internet early on - I had both America Online and Compuserve accounts by 1992, and was intensely in love with the Internet. I got a regular Internet account in 1993, and sent e-mails during a trip to Japan in 1995. I put up my first Web site with my resume in 1996, the year I also got my first job with an Internet company, AOL.This column has been online since 1998.
But I wasn't always so confident with computers.
When Westword, the newspaper I worked for, replaced the office IBM Selectric typewriters with computers in 1986, I was positive I would get myself fired for not being able to adapt to the new technology. I was terrified of the computer's complexities. I had been in high school at a time before personal computers, when only true geeks played with enormous computers that covered up a whole wall. When Westword was computerized, I just learned enough commands to do my job. The rest of how a computer works was a mystery to me, like why the sky is blue.
It wasn't until later, when I poured soda water on an early laptop and had to take it apart to swab it dry with paper towels, that I realized that although they're mysterious, computers are simply machines.
I've always been comfortable with machines - I guess that's the Asian influence. I love gadgets and electronics. Growing up, I had the usual assortment of transistor radios but I also got interested in photography, and by the time I was in high school, I had a collection of gadgetry from cameras and lenses to darkroom equipment. Those fancy - and expensive - cameras never frightened me.
As I got older, I became interested in music and surrounded myself with an assortment of hi-fi equipment - gadgets for older children, really. I got a CD player pretty early on while vinyl albums were still being made, and urged all my friends to get a CD player because that was the wave of the future.
But I was not an early adopter of computers. When the first Apple Macintosh came out in 1984, I was oblivious, and happy with my IBM Selectric with its clickety typeball tapping out letters on old-fashioned paper. My first real computer was a hand-me-down in the late '80s from my younger brother Glenn, who got one of those first Macs for his journalism school education. I used it to write "The Toy Book," and that's when I fell in love with computers. My friend and co-author Leland Rucker was using computers in the early 1980s when he worked at a Kansas City newspaper, and he bought a Kaypro computer way back in 1984, so he helped urge me into the digital age.
Once I finally got the computer bug, I started spending lots of money on gadgets for computers, including hardware like printers and modems, but also an entire library of software.
Over the years since then, I've wrestled with both hardware and software, trying to make stuff work. I think I've come out ahead overall, although I don't know my won-loss record.
But I can never be complacent. Last night I may have won the wrestling match, but this morning the computer got me back: our Internet connection didn't work. Sigh. There's always something…. Excuse me while I go to battle.