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Fun with technology

Technology has been a part of the newspaper industry long enough now that it is easy to take for granted, easy to forget how far it has evolved over such a relatively small amount of time and how just a few years ago the printing press was the most complicated machine in publishing.

Today, of course, there is the whole world of computing, of software and hardware that make the job easier. There are cell phones with considerably more firepower than the first computers introduced into the industry. Technology has swept through publishing the way it has virtually every other field, business and aspect of our lives, personal and professional.

Most of the time, the Minot Daily newsroom doesn’t give it much collective thought. You turn a light on, the light comes on. You dial a phone and it rings. On good days, I think most people interface with technology without giving it too much thought. As a result, sometimes we lose track of just how important it is to so many facets of everyday life.

Then there are the less good days in terms of technology. We had a few of those this week around the office. Somewhere, some stars were aligned so that over the course of the week, we had several frustrating technological difficulties.

That’s when one realizes how significant tech has become. What do you mean this computer won’t talk to that computer? What do you mean the same program quit working on a dozen computers at the same time… it’s installed separately?

Here you can tell I am not a high-tech kind of person. Well, half-true. I use a lot of it at work and at home. I just don’t know how it works. I’ve published thousands of photos, but please don’t ask me to explain how cameras work. I might know operating systems, but when I have seen the guts of a computer it all just seems so small and mysterious. As recently as a decade ago, I would be asked what kind of computer I worked on and my only half-mocking answer was routinely “beige… it’ s a beige computer.”

So when technology has a hiccup, it makes me uncomfortable. It makes me realize how reliant we have become on machinery, which is unnerving when one really isn’t very tech savvy. Few things give me such a sense of powerlessness as “Error 404,” which, for the life of me, I still can’t define. Is there an Error 403? Is an Error 405 worse? Would an Error 808 mean to run for one’s life?

At Minot Daily News, we have access to our company’s whole talented team of tech support geniuses. Well, to me they are geniuses. Also, possibly magic. They impress me at times, when I call with a problem I am sure is going to stump them. Then, a ping here, a program deactivated or replaced or refreshed here, a setting there – and somehow, having never shown a sign of panic, they make things work.

Having these technological wizards at our disposal certainly takes the edge off when we get a blue screen of death or when you hit a button and nothing happens.

However, this week when some of our technology misbehaved, my thoughts went to the array of it we use and what would happen if it went down, then the backups went down, then the backups to the backups went down, and if things were so broken that tech support couldn’t get us up and operating in a timely fashion. Now, realistically, I imagine there is a plan for that. But eventually in theory, contingency plans run out. I’d wonder, standing among a bunch of machines that aren’t working, how we didn’t see the risk in our dependency.

Of course, that didn’t happen. Witness, newspapers got out to you all week without any outward signs of the particular challenges overcome by both our staff and our magical tech support geniuses.

For a moment there, though, it did offer reason to pause – and reason to ponder if there isn’t a downside to the technology that makes our job easier. At least it seems unlikely in even a worst case scenario that the machinery will become self-aware and enslave the human race.

Unless that’s what Error 404 means. In which case, I’m unplugging everything.

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