I am constantly amazed at technology – especially the Internet. We started posting parts of our paper (Carolina Arts) and extra articles which we didn’t have room for on a companion website in June 1999. Not long after we were posting pictures of each page of our paper – every month so everyone who visits our site could see the printed version of the paper. Now I’m writing my first blog. Not that blogs are a new thing, but I’m usually far behind the curve when it comes to taking advantage of new technology. It’s not easy for this old dog to learn new tricks. I thank my lucky stars that my better half (wife Linda) is able to pick up new technology fairly fast and then bring it down to my level – which takes months if not years in some cases.
Linda and I purchased our first computer in 1983 – an Apple IIe. It cost us a fortune back then, but it was well worth the cost and time spent learning how to take advantage of all the things it could do. Within years we had paid, what was at the time equal to a house payment to get an external hard drive with 30mbs of memory and another house payment for a 1/4mb of ram memory. Today, I can buy a laptop computer for the same price of those two items with 40 gigs of memory and 1 gig of ram – with CD/DVD players and burners, internal cameras, wireless internet connections and a host of other features – not even dreamed of back in 1983. Now, many versions of Apple computers later, we’re still trying to learn about all the things computers and the Internet can do to help us spread the word about the visual art community in North and South Carolina.
Although expressing my opinions about issues taking place in that art community is not a new thing – being able to do so without waiting for the latest issue of the paper to reach readers is – for me. It will now be possible to make comments on a weekly, daily or even hourly basis. That just blows my mind and concerns others who know me, but don’t worry, I’m pretty careful to make sure my opinions are based on solid ground. And, I have learned that those who talk when they are angry or emotional about issues – make mistakes and often end up saying things they didn’t mean to. Also, you are writing to a worldwide audience – you just can’t talk like your sitting in a local bar or in some friend’s living room. You have to bring your readers along with you on an issue – they need to know what you know and they need to know where that opinion is coming from, and that’s the beauty of a blog on the Internet – space is not a limitation – except for readers with a short attention span.
So, I hope you’ll join me on this journey and keep up with my postings. And, e-mail me your comments at (info@carolinaarts.com) – just make sure you put the word “blog” in the subject line.