Software and Implementation: Oh, My.

I love our age of hyper-technology, I really and truly do. I love talking with people about technology. I love looking closely at new technologies and wondering how quickly I might be able to use them if I had one in my possession.

I even love the problems that are an inherent part of getting from purchase to implementation and even better, actual use by mortals. I really do. I love troubleshooting. I love checking my email during the summer--several times a day. Sure. I do. I actually do.

Technology makes me feel connected and even enabled me to behave like a real citizen this past Tuesday. Technology allowed me to write a good-looking letter of support for the Butte Co. Library system. It enabled me to quickly learn the whereabouts of the Board of Supervisors meeting and the designated meeting time. I was even able to pull up a digital map and have some confidence about my destination. At the meeting, technology allowed the Chief Administative Assistant (is there an oxymoron in there, somewhere?) to make a glowing .ppt that really did look pretty darn good and digestable for just about anyone in attendance.

Note to self: technology is good.

But there is something else that we need to hold on to, here, and tightly, and that's common sense. Nothing in the techno realm resembles common sense, not even a little bit. Students are not famous for being great evaluators of web information, for one example, and many adults aren't all that much savvier.

And because so much technology is so new, you naturally have in any given microcosm a great disparity between the techno-philes and -phobes. And with developments at the speed of DSL the chasm grows in what can be for some a scary-fast way.

But the only response is to paddle as fast as we can and grab a little flotsam along the way, even if we don't nail the buoy on the first try.