The Siren's Song
My interest in computers is not a technical one. I have no great interest in the way sophisticated technical machinery works. I've always treated my computers the way I treat my car: to use it to get me to a destination, not to understand its internal intricacies.
But making a computer do what you want is not always as easy as making a car behave properly. When my computer has not behaved in the way I expected, I have been known to rage colorfully at it.
Despite theses occasional luddite lapses, I do not suffer from the sort of technophobia that seems to grip so many people of my generation.
To them computers are the Sirens of Greek mythology. And they, like Odysseus, lash themselves to the mast with their ears full of wax so that they will not succumb to the Sirens' Song. And they let their fellow-travellers, usually the young and more adaptable, take the oars and tiller.
Baptismal Fire
While I did not have ears full of wax, in the 1980s, when computers were advancing apace in complexity and usefulness, I played out the sophisticated trope of abominating them. This defence mechanism worked until I came to use them.
I've always felt the need to write and to publish - to thrust my views on a largely unenthusiastic world. I had written for, edited and laid-out university newspapers in the early 1970s. I wrote and printed my own magazines from the late '70s. I used a typewriter, wax stencils and an ink Gestetner. It was horrible: no control of layout, little opportunity properly to edit and illustrate.
In 1987 I was finally convinced that a computer could be used for magazine production. I had no sudden and blinding flash of revelation about computers. Instead, I adopted a new paradigm for them: they were nothing more than complicated, but enhanced, typewriters. But I was wrong. Computers enabled me to relearn the joys of control. And I discovered desktop publishing. Then databases. Then networked information.
Rowed to Damascus
I am an information junkie, a font of information, if you will. I remember a lot of stuff - most of it useless except when I can inveigle someone into a Trivial Pursuit game or a friend rings up needing to know something about Bourkina Faso. And what I cannot recall, I can access from other fonts of information, human or material. For most of my Baby Boomer life the material fonts have been in the form of printed material - books, newspapers and magazines.And until recently, if I wanted a material font of information, I bought it and added it to my collection.
In 1995 I went back to university to complete my degree. I had to start hunting for more esoteric information in arcane aspects of medieval history, especially medieval pilgrimage. Naturally, I assumed the need to visit libraries, particularly university libraries, to find it. But I soon discovered that I didn't need to physically visit a library to see what relevant resources it had. There are five university libraries in Sydney - several of them with multiple branches. Using the Internet, I could visit the catalogues of each library, find which had the books or journals I needed and determine whether they were available, without leaving my desk. Saves a hell of a lot of travel time that.
And I discovered the utility of the Web as a font of information. Studying medieval history, I assumed that there was not much relevant material on the Internet. After all, historians, particularly historians of the medieval period, like the feel of paper and vellum, and the musty smell of dusty reading rooms, don't they? However, I was to discover, over a couple of years, a number of sites of immense value to the student: medieval sources (in original language and in translation); reading lists and recently published academic papers; newsgroups discussing some of the issues; and overseas universities' courses and course notes.
The Internet proved to be an invaluable resource in other ways. Let me give two examples - one professional and the other academic.
Craven Images
When I'm not occupied with my own affairs, I do work for the Australian Press Council, dealing with complaints from the public about the Australian print media. An editor, in his response to a complaint about a picture of a local tragedy he'd published, referred to recent Pulitzer Prize-winning photographs. What photos were they? Previously, I might have sought a newspaper report or visited a library. But, now, I had recourse to the Web and, within five minutes, had printed off in my office in Sydney copies of each of the images - obtained from the Pulitzer Prize headquarters on the east coast of the US - pictures taken in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing.
Which hunts?
One of my recent university courses was on early American history. I was doing research on the Salem witch trials and had been thinking about a modern parallel: the spate of accusations of child sexual abuse made against the owners and employees of pre-schools. I knew of the "Mr Bubbles" case in Sydney and thought there might be other cases elsewhere. An hour or so on the Web brought me:
- information on the McMartin case from the US; and
- references to a movie made about it;
- more details on Mr Bubbles;
- list of similar cases in the US, Canada and the UK;
- and a slew of usable material on related topics including satanic cults and recovered memory syndrome.
It is unlikely that I would have found most of this information had I been using a library as my font, even if the library had access to a bank of the latest periodicals.
Epiphany
The Web is an amazing font of information. But it does not easily yield the information you need. I want to help others to appreciate the Internet as a font of information and as a provider of information.
I've travelled a long way on my Web pilgrimage - from computer sceptic to Web evangelist. Here endeth the lesson.
First written: sometime in 1999
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