www.

 

My only defense was that my response was more a reflex than anything offered with deep thought.

Over the years, I’ve had times when people have asked about my website. Interviews for a newspaper, for example, where the reporter asked how people can find my writing, learn more about it, or visit In My Backpack.

Recently, I had the pleasure of being a guest on a podcast.

(Side note of shameless self-promotion: KPL Lit Talks from the Killingly Public Library. “Bob’s Journeys” is the episode title. Available just about everywhere you look for podcasts. Thanks again Claudette and Kim, I had a wonderful time.)

The show was nearing it’s end, and the question came, and I kicked into my answer: “…at w w w dot…”. Which, when listening to it later with my fiancée, Karen, was all she needed to hear to begin laughing hysterically and tossing jokes my way.

It’s here that I need to point out three things. First, as I have every so often covered in a variety of essays and stories, I am not a grumpy person that swears and mutters and shakes my finger at confusing technology. Well, at least not all the time. Instead, I simply don’t mind doing some things and often find myself not fully embracing all that technology has to offer or the latest and greatest details. Second, the boys love to let me know how far behind the times I can be, such as whenever they see my dedicated only to its purpose, not built in but separate, GPS unit in the car. And third, Karen happens to work in the tech world, and she holds back nothing when opportunities to roll her eyes or make fun of me are available.

So, sure, w w w dot was not exactly current terminology a few years ago, never mind a week or two ago. And, yes, I deserved the good-natured humor at my expense.

Still, I have a question.

Do you ever head onto the internet and type “www.” as you select a website? I absolutely expect the majority of you to say no. I can’t recall the last time I was entering it myself. But some of you do. Some of you, whether you admit it out loud, only begrudgingly, or not at all but secretly know the truth, do type out www. to start a website address.

Now, I agree. Saying that you do something a certain way and never acted on alternatives for no other reason than that’s the way you’ve always done it is sloppy and can be incredibly problematic. No argument with that. But…

If you started working on something, say with Excel or Word, there are plenty of ways for you to save your efforts. Right? From a keyboard shortcut to the fancy floppy disk icon, diving behind the scenes to deliberately use the save as designation, they all work. As long as something works, is there really a need to change the way someone else does things? Is there really a need, if you’re happy and comfortable, for you to change the way you do things?

You probably could defend a position that there is. Learning new software. Keeping pace with technology. Improving efficiency. All and more, worthy considerations.

Still, I have to chuckle when the folks that pick on me for my peculiarities and preferences find their lives smash to a halt because they can’t find a charging cord or the power has gone out. I may need to simplify the details when telling folks about my site, but I can also order a pizza without internet access.

That may sound funny, or possibly mean, but more than once I’ve been placing orders with friends and had to stop the online process. The site doesn’t allow you to remove items from a sandwich, swap out side dishes, or request extra sauce. Need to talk to a person to do that. Tech is not perfect.

Once, someone working for a restaurant told me they never read the special instructions section of any internet order slip. Consider that for a moment. Even when you can enter in requests, when it’s an option for your use, it’s still not a given anyone will care. (Cue tree figuratively falling in woods with no one nearby, and make of that what you will.)

More to the point, what works as intuitive and obvious to you is simply not intuitive and obvious to everyone else. If you’re looking to make something approachable for everyone, it’s important to keep that in mind.

So, I’ll ask. Is everyone ok with mushrooms?

 

If you have any comments or questions, please e-mail me at Bob@inmybackpack.com