"Speak one language, think as one person. Speak two languages, think as two people. And so on," was the saying I heard when living in Necochea, Argentina learning Castellano, a Spanish dialect. "You know you got it when you start dreaming the language," said a missionary friend. Accordingly, there came a time when my Argentinean friends would be speaking Castellano in my dreams to my Yankee friends, who were speaking English back to them, and everybody understood each other, but I would wake up with headaches.

Perhaps headaches are a good segway into learning how to become digitally fluent, since this involves computers. The good news is that everything is going in the right direction: easier and easier; faster and faster; cheaper and cheaper (trust me, DOS prompts in the early 1980's were ugly compared to today's point and click graphical environments, often referred to as GUI's - graphical user interface).

In a previous chapter, I mentioned that all forms of human communications can be created, edited, stored, and distributed via their digital denominators. Those who wish to have maximum communication range and design lives, versus make livings, will find it advantageous to be familiar with the cornerstone digital building blocks in each major communication area, such as audio (e.g., *.wav), graphics (e.g., *.tif), text (e.g., ASCII, rtf), video (e.g., mpeg), and compositions (e.g., quicktime, *.pdf). Note: The asterisk stands for "wild card," meaning that any name can be placed in front of the period.

It is not the scope of this document to provide detailed understanding for each digital building block. Instead, I hope to point to a couple of foundation areas that will inspire one to dig further and join me on a path of becoming digitally fluent. The following are not answers, but a jump start:

Foundation Area #1: Organization and Partitions - "Garbage in is garbage out." Yes, I know, an over used maxim but one that really strikes at the importance of being digitally awake, as in organized. Organization is key since computers are not magic boxes. They need to be told exactly what to do. If we want a particular result, it helps to be prepared up front (organized).

Organization has nothing to do with computers, software, or, for that matter, file cabinets. It has more to do with retrieval. Somebody can have the messiest desk in the world and be organized, while another person can have neatly labeled files and be disorganized.

I've heard experts claim that a good test to see if we are organized is to see if we can retrieve something in under two minutes. If we can put our hands on the item we seek in two minutes or less, then we're organized.

My favorite technique is the accordion "parent-child relationship." Here I group all the major topics into parent categories, with corresponding sub categories that branch out underneath. For instance, in file cabinets, I use green pendaflex file folders with colored tabs that only get listed on the left side for all my parent categories. I then place child folders (plain manila tabbed folders and/or green pendaflex subsets) behind the parents' with tabbing on the right. This way I can open any cabinet drawer and look down the left and immediately see all the parent categories, which gets me into a zone quickly, then zoom in by looking on the right side for all the subset categories.

When I was starting out in the digital waters, I didn't know what I needed to stay on top of. In effect, I didn't know what I didn't know, so planning a framework for organizing inputs was somewhat frustrating. Ultimately, I created an accordion-like system in a drawer, affectionately referred to as my "Living Library." On the left, all the major categories were alphabetical, and subsets were built, expanded, and deleted on the right. For instance, in the A section I might have started with subsets like audio, agents, animations and applications like Acrobat. As these folders grew, some would be condensed and merged. For example, many things collected about audio needed to be merged with subsets in the music category, or vice versa.

This rather simple system has helped me get my hands on subjects where my knowledge going in was zero, yet allowed me to grow as I matured in understanding.

Data collection and organization costs, so be careful. It is easy to overdo systems at the expense of productivity. So, like everything else, balance is key.

As to translating all this into digital speak, browser bookmarks to e-mail folders, think in groups per parent-child, and away we go!

Now, partitioning is very similar to the concepts of organization. Partitioning is a term used to describe the process of breaking up a large space into smaller ones. Nature even supports this idea of using smaller units to elegantly assemble larger constructs.

Contemporary knowledge coming out of neural network labs shows that big biological machines (organs) are expensive and vulnerable (heart surgery or attacks), whereas small, readily made biologic machines (blood cells) are inexpensive and easily manufactured/replaced. The most fascinating support information I've encountered is from Professor Robert M. Sapolsky, a Stanford University neuroscientist. Check out his lecture series, The Biology of Human Behavior, the Neurological Origins of Our Individuality, available via Superstar Teacher Series by the Teaching Company.

When it comes to small and readily available, I've always marveled at how sand is responsible for silicon chips. One can't get more basic than a grain of sand. Sand is leveraged into computational machines by further use of streams of ones and zeros, representing bits and bytes; again, very cheap indeed. Which reminds me of Stephen Wright's joke, "I own the world's largest seashell collection - maybe you've seen it - it's scattered on every beach in the world."

Today it is not uncommon to buy a new computer with an 18 gigabyte hard drive. Can you imagine if every file you ever created was in a big list, say 6000 files? How are you going to find the file you are looking for? One of the things partitioning does at the personal computer level is to create the illusion of multiple hard drives. Take an 18 gig hard drive, often known as drive c, and create 8 other partitions, each of 2 gigs, giving us a total of 9 drives (the c plus the 8 others) each having 2 gigs, the sum of our original 18 gig drive. So now, instead of one huge drive, we have 9 smaller ones. Back to parent-child thinking, maybe one drive is for the primary operating system and applications, another for text files, another for audio files, and so on.

Data warehousing is at the extreme end of the storage spectrum. The trade rags suggest that the secrets of successful data warehousing are attributable to the nuances of partitioning. Partitioning allows us to think in chunk-like groupings. Even programming languages are leaning towards objects (chunks of code that perform a routine). I even remember a programmer/mentor who spoke of partitioning database design for Web applications, "Chuck, the three areas you need to consider when frameworking your database designs are: data input, data deletion, and data retrieval."

The history of warfare also shows the importance of chunking into manageable bits. During the American Revolution, the large formal European battle techniques had a hard time going up against small, nimble, guerrillas. Same thing with boats. In 1588, the Spanish Armada was thought to be invincible with their large fleet of 125 ships. Yet the smaller, nimbler fire ships used by the English, were able to scatter the larger ships and bring about defeat. Thus changing the tide from Spanish world domination to British ascent to international supremacy.

Foundation Area #2: Backups - Not a glamorous topic but if our work is important to us, keep copies. It is only a matter of time before our digital data goes down, and Murphy's Law being what it is, we are liable to have issues at the most inappropriate times.

There was a time in 1982, typing away on my Panasonic Senior Partner luggable computer (a forty pound beast), when the electricity suddenly went out and my research paper disappeared into vaporware. When the electricity came back on, I was left with no file, and had to recreate everything via an all-nighter.

There was another time in 1993, when my entire car disappeared (10 days old and never to be seen again), and in the back was my laptop computer with years of my first book effort - GONE. "Didn't you have copies?" my friends would ask. Sort of. Since I had been working on this project, a reflective about my years in Argentina, I had various chapters in various states on various floppies. A couple of months or so before my car was stolen, I had compiled all the chapters into one big file on my hard drive and started combing through the chapters, tying them together in tense and tone. To have done a backup would have required a massive amount of floppies, and I reasoned I'd get to it after I tightened up the manuscript. Accordingly, I propose a change in slogans, from "Just do it," to "Air Backup, jump to it."

Foundation Area #3: File Naming - Ever come across a Web site where there was a graphic box with no real image inside? Most likely this is due to a file naming conflict. On some machines, "myfile.gif" is totally different from "Myfile.gif" - look closely and the uppercase M is the only thing different, but to a computer, these can be two totally different files.

As a Websmith, I routinely get files from Mac authors, reformat on a PC machine using several applications (e.g., manipulate, compress, assemble), then port to Unix servers. File naming is a small matter, but it can really test your nerves.

In the early days, IBM compatible machines required adherence to DOS (disk operating system) specifications of 8 characters for a root name followed by a period, then three characters for the file extension. Typically, extensions were controlled by the application one was working with. For example, a Photoshop file might be named "somename.PSD" where the ".PSD" extension says, "Hey, I'm a Photoshop file so if anybody clicks on me to get me going, go open the Photoshop application first since I belong to the Photoshop family."

My advice for naming files is to be case sensitive. Try to use all lowercase, and keep root names to eight characters and extensions to three. It'll help when sharing files with others.

Foundation Area #4: Machines, Operating Systems and Peripherals - Wintel machines are today's most dominant beasts (Windows running on Intel chips). But this is likely to change as our future migrates away from Windows just as we moved away from IBM punch cards. We are already seeing WebTV and handheld devices that tap into computer networks and serve us, accelerating our independence from today's chunky, temperamental boxes that crowd our desks.

Suffice it to say there are three major flavors of machines: Mac, PC, and Unix. Each type has a favorite corresponding operating system. Operating systems tell the computer the lay of the land and how to behave, e.g., this is a keyboard, input comes in this way, this is a screen that has these characteristics, this is the central processing unit which handles data streams this way, etc.

Peripherals hang off a central processing unit (CPU), which is the brains behind any computer. Keyboards, mice, and monitors would seem to be all part of the computer but they are not. They are extensions to the central machine. Every time we add one of these peripherals (e.g., modems, printers, scanners) we need to be aware of device drivers, little pieces of code that help the computer understand the nuances of the peripheral, e.g., "I'm an HP printer, my margins are typically this way, I use these kinds of fonts, I treat color call-outs this way, etc."

Not all peripherals work with all machines or operating systems. A peripheral that works with an Apple computer might not work with a PC (e.g., maybe the manufacturer does not offer drivers for the PC) or vice versa. There is a lot of development going on with "plug and play" devices like USB (universal serial bus), and this is a good thing, so watch for more in these departments. Also, keep your eye on Linux, a flavor of Unix that is Open Source and growing rapidly at the PC level. As more and more device and software manufacturers start porting their wares to this platform, we'll find greatly improved products at less cost.

Consider this post from a newsgroup of favored musicians: "I think we all agree that operating system developers fail to take the many thousands of musicians into account when developing operating systems. What has changed over the years? Faster CPU and Buss Speed...With slower performance...Only one culprit left....the operating system (Seattle folks)."

Foundation Area #5: Networks, Country Clubs and Respect - The Internet is the granddaddy of computer networks, which can be thought of as worlds of phone lines connected to worlds of computers. The World-Wide-Web (www) is a subset of the Internet, which happens to be the easiest to use, and the fastest growing section.

"I have AOL, aren't I on the Internet?" Yes and no. AOL is like a private country club, akin to a subset of the granddaddy. With most country clubs come dictated behaviors, e.g., you have to eat two meals a month at the clubhouse grill, you must use caddies on Saturday mornings, etc. Online country clubs endorse similar restrictions (e.g., e-mail redirects, file attachments) and, in some cases, questionable practices (e.g., dropping customers at random to free up dial-in phone lines to promote the illusion of less busy signals when trying to logon).

Ultimately, it is the "don't tread on me" attitude that inspires many of us to leave the private clubs for the free, wide-open ranges of the Internet's open standard platforms. The protocols of TCP/IP are the basis for our networking denominators. Accordingly, I highly suggest not having anything to do with any country club or network that fails to respect this open standard.

Net-etiquette is a term used to connote acceptable behaviors for group participation. Each chatroom, listserv, and other communal technologies have their various policies, informal and formal, that in summation are known as Net-etiquette. Accordingly, learn to flow with the group. If you don't like it, start your own or find another one.

A friend admitted that when he just learned to surf online, he thought it would be funny to jump into a group (i.e., chatroom) and mix it up, "just to see what would happen." Of all the groups one could start with, he chose an Indian group discussing Hindu beliefs. I say this affectionately, because I think one could turn to many other hotly debated topics for a true test of mixing it up with passions, like gun control, abortion and others. Anyhow, he started to insert nonsensical vulgarities, only to discover most of the online members saying, "our new guest is a bore," and then signed off. No flaming (getting back at my friend via words or deeds), just simple logging off. My friend was ashamed as he admitted to the lackluster appeal of being known as a bore.

Once I got an e-mail from someone apologizing for misusing one of my sites. Apparently, this person had gone around the Internet and signed up for over 3000 brochures to be sent to his friend, "as a joke." Losing friends inspired this young man to go back to each of the 3000 sites and tell of his crime of wasting tree-slices and efforts, hoping to have his friend's name removed from site lists, and also hoping that Web site managers could send proof of removal so he could try to win back his friend.

Here is a three part chronology of one of the more polite, yet poignant examples of Net-etiquette in action:

• Part 1: A "newbie" (new person), or maybe just a lazy person, wrote to the whole list: "I asked you to please take me off of your mailing list. I do not want to receive mail from this user's group. I hope I don't have to send this again. Thank you."
  
  
• Part 2: Another person, a very seasoned and respected list contributor replied: "In any case, it is bad Net-etiquette to bother the list with your attempts to get signed off. We can't do anything about it, and it's just another useless message that fills our mailbox. I mean, if you subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, you don't take out a full page ad to tell all readers that you no longer want to receive it, do you? No, you call up the WSJ company, i.e. follow proper procedure, and cancel your subscription. Anyway, nothing personal, just a general tirade, because I'm getting tired of reading, at least once or twice a day, a message of that kind on one of the mailing lists to which I've subscribed. I sometimes wonder how people manage to get a subscription to a list, if they can't manage to figure out how to unsubscribe. People, do your own homework, don't expect others to do it for you..."
  
  
• Part 3: Then somebody else on the list replied: "You go (name)! You just said what everyone else was thinking, but considerably more diplomatically and thoughtfully than probably most. Hey - check out the OT - I'm learning!" Note: OT means "off topic" and is used in front of a subject line to let the list know that a post is loosely related to the list's core focus.

Newsflash: "Paperboy Hits Man with Bundles - Ouch." The papers came flying over my seven-foot-high fence and ricocheted off patio bushes and delicate landscaping lights. No, this paper delivery person did not hit me directly, but the experience did hit home to the point of interactive accessibility, even with analog media like unwanted newspapers.

As a Websmith, I truly appreciate the importance of gracefully allowing people to easily "opt-on" and "opt-off" (option on or option off) e-lists. So when a local newspaper started throwing their daily paper into my courtyard, I was mildly perturbed. No reflection on the paper's contents or quality, I just don't do papers. I'm inundated with over a hundred analog trade rags each month, plus all the e-lists...

I called the circulation department and asked that such behavior cease. There was shocked disbelief on the other end of the phone. Definitely agitation, but ultimately agreement to honor my request. But, then the papers kept coming. So a couple of days later, I called the news desk, "I have a story for you. How do you feel about reporting on yourselves?" We laughed as we discussed my minor issue and our combined frustrations experienced with many Internet sites where nobody seems to care. At the close of our conversation, this editor confessed, "I guess the thinking around here has been why would anybody not want a free paper." This was a very telling comment as it hints at why worlds of hierarchies are crumbling in favor of freedoms to choose our participations. True to his word, "I'll take care of it," the flying papers ceased landing in my courtyard, and I respect them for that!

Lastly, in the area of respect, be kind to tech support. Yes I know they can really frustrate us at times, as indicated by this joke: A helicopter's instruments went on the blink and they were flying around in the air without knowing which direction the airport was in. They circled this large building with people staring out of the windows. The pilot drew a sign and held it up, "Where am I?" and the people in the building drew a return sign that said, "You are in a helicopter." With that the pilot turned towards the right and found the airport. His copilot was astonished and said, "How did you know the airport was to the right." The pilot replied, "I figured those people in the building must have worked for Mr. Bill's mega-computer corp., because they gave me a technically correct but totally useless answer, and I knew where his building was in relation to the airport."

One night, while standing on a California balcony discussing my frustrations in learning how to work with MIDI and digital audio, a famous musical producer friend said, "Chuck there are no stupid technical questions, just crazy tech people who don't know how to answer simply."

So give tech support the benefit of the doubt, and start from a platform of respect. Most of them are trying to answer as simply as they can. And if you get a real winner, consider arranging for pizza to be delivered as a "thank you." PS - I love plain Sicilian.

Chapter continues on the next page . . .

top