Saturday, March 19, 2011

Gremlins for ever?

During the last phase of his long life, my dad's one regret was that he never learned about computers. Some fellow had offered to teach him, but my father declined. Maybe it was just as well, really. There are times when I truly envy those few friends of mine who don't own and spend little time on a computer. Just recently I read an article about how our daily life is increasingly enmeshed in this way, and how the time spent in the virtual world is part of our reality. Scary. One of the questions posed in the article was, 'Can a friendship formed on line be a true friendship?' I wonder. Yes, I have a dearly loved email buddy, but then, I'd met her even before we began our continuing correspondence.

Working on the computer, so many of us run into glitches and we put that down to what we call gremlins. From time to time you can hear me trading grrrrrr insults with them. But I wonder if we're doing a disservice to these machine beings. Right now I'm busy building a couple of websites. (I'll let you know as soon as mine goes live.) What made me think of my dad, is because, much to my surprise, I'm thoroughly enjoying this process. I know he would have been enthusiastic, especially as this was one of his main and very-endearing traits.

And you know what? There've been a couple of moments when I've really felt those gremlins have been helping rather than hindering me. Thanks very much, little... er... peeps?

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