"Technology Happens"

"Technology Happens"

Do you ever feel that technology just happens to you whether or not you are ready or prepared to deal with it?  I'm certain that this will date me but when I was a young budding art school student, computers existed but were not the standard educational tool that they are today.  You could scarcely find a computer anywhere on campus. Even the graphic design students were working with a pencil and pen.  During my graduate studies at a large university I began to see the beginnings of computer use but the "laptop" still hadn't made its' appearance and students weren't walking around with massive grey boxes under their arms. I was in my studio happily streaming music via the cassette deck on my boom box and watching television on my 4 inch black and white magnavox am/fm clock radio unit.  I thought I was living pretty large. I'll save the mini english muffin pizzas made in my toaster oven for another post. My version of instant photography was my vintage Polaroid land camera which I still think takes interesting pictures and any word processing was typed out on my Brother electric typewriter (ink ribbon). 

 So many major changes have occurred over the past 2 decades and for the "studio artist", I think that being overwhelmed is a commonly felt. Resistance is also something that I sense from artists my age and older.  "Why do I have to learn all that technology now?"  Frankly, the field of art just like any other field is getting more and more competitive all the time, and if your not taking advantage of the positive aspects of online marketing and social media it will be very hard to participate as a professional.  If you had told me just 5 years ago that I would have 2 facebook pages, 2 twitter account, and 2 blogs I would have thought you were nuts.  My wife often says to me, "I don't know how you exist?"  She is referring of course to the fact that I know very little about computers yet I have all these online sites and I'm trying to do all of it on my iphone.  I think I might be a little nuts.  When she first met me she also thought I was a surfer dude from California who had a vintage clothing store and only listened to NPR.  Now that's really funny.  In short I just want to say, that I feel for anyone that technology happens to.  It's not easy to learn all that there is to learn and always have to keep up with the latest tech changes.  I for one am counting on my 3 year old son to be my personal computer tech asap.