On this rainy day, I’m sitting inside, incredibly frustrated because my internet has slowed to an unending crawl. We are talking worse than dial up. I can’t believe how frustrating it is to not be able to send the documents and the replies that I need to send to various people. To check to see what is going on through social media with my friends and family. What kinds of events are happening around the world, and what the latest viral videos are? And trust me, I know this all sounds reminiscent of the Louis C.K. "Everything's amazing and nobody's happy" bit.
It’s crazy to think that, even when I was a little kid, all of this didn’t exist. I find it fascinating, that what I do, digital strategy, is to assist with making something that didn’t exist even twenty years ago, run better.
I come from a long line of blacksmiths on one side of my family. After three generations of blacksmiths, came my papa who was a farmer. On the other side was my Zedi, a small business owner who operated a travel shop, selling luggage. These were real things. Some of my blacksmith ancestors were left handed, and actually crafted their own tools to be able to do their jobs. I can’t imagine sitting down with these guys and explaining to them what I do. “So, basically I try to make this thing that didn’t exist in your time run better?”. There have been ton’s of momentary jobs over time; think about the fax fixers, the MySpace moguls, the RIM employ….. ok maybe that last one is a little premature. However, all of these jobs were valuable at the time, and the skills are transferable to other things.
One aspect that I find incredibly fascinating is the fleeting nature of what I do. In order to do my job well, I split my time between working on projects, and researching the latest advancements in technology. It is incredibly hard to stay up date because things are constantly changing with social media, and best practices.
Keeping this in mind, it’s fascinating to see how even in a year’s time, what I spent so much time working on and researching can be out of date. Even the best websites need to be redone in three year’s time, maybe even sooner. Looking at social media plans and strategy, you’ll be lucky if it’s relevant in a year. However, at the time, it worked. It did was it was supposed to do.
There won’t be any tools left from my job that one day my great, great, great, great, great grandchildren will find and wonder about. Technology changes so fast, I’ll be lucky if they can even access what I’ve spent so much of life at. However, that doesn’t mean I would change what I am doing. Times are different now. Many of the jobs that I have had aren’t catered towards leaving a legacy. Cooking for instance, once the plate is gone, its gone. Only if you have done a really good job, but more likely a really bad one will you ever hear anything more of it. However, the skill of cooking is something that people talk about. People remember their Grandma made the best matzo ball soup (even if years later you found out it came from a box), just like how I talk about how I found the tools leftover from my blacksmith ancestors. Just because you can't hold it, doesn't make it any less real.
I often wonder what would my world be like if I slid into a parallel dimension (Sliders anyone?), where the Arpanet had never been created (the earliest known instance of the internet)? What would I do then? It’s on a day like today, as I wait for the internet to hopefully come back on so I can once again rejoin the world that I know, that I actually get the time to examine these things. I would like to say that the internet is the only thing holding me back from being the next Wayne Gretzky, however, that may not be the case.
Update: I have alas fixed my internet. To my surprise, it was actually something that I could be halfway proud of. A faulty coaxial cord seems to have been the reason, and after using wire cutters, and getting a replacement end, and destroying my entire living in the process, I am now back in business.
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