I was having an interesting conversation with a friend the other day, one that oddly centered around change in general. Or perhaps not so odd since discussing the new theOtaku and Worlds lead to discussing change for more than just the site. There was one point however that really stuck in my mind and that centered on the perception that having pm’s only at one site was inconvenient. Just as the concept of needing to log into more than one without a link in the back room to myOtaku to take you there was somehow indicative of a lack of community and being tied together. Excuse me while I go lolwhat!?!
Now naturally statements like that tend to make me go… what? While I am simultaneously looking at the speaker as if they have horns growing out of their head; because at that point, I can just about see them, seriously. Now before you wonder why I was giving my friend such an odd look I’ll explain as I did to them when they asked me… “How can you say it’s not inconvenient when it is?” Well because… it’s not. Hang in there and I’ll clarify that for you, even though it reminds me of how much older I am in comparison to many members here.
It goes back to many of the different jobs I’ve had over the years, jobs where you didn’t have a lot of the features like browser tabbing or even a more interactive interface like windows 95 and now the shiny windows Vista [which I adore by the way] So to make up for those “limitations” We learned how to make things convenient via other methods, the most common was to move one’s taskbar to the side instead of along the bottom of the screen. That way it was easy to figure out which program you had open was the one you needed to click on, because after so many, the little links become too crowded for you to see what’s open. Here’s a screenshot I made so you can see what I’m talking about.
I can’t help but laugh at sweeping statements that we need some sort of link to be connected when I remember it all before such connections were even possible. That image I showed you is what I was often use to doing in order to keep up with all the programs I had open for work, and that mindset carried over into regular life as well. I didn’t whine or moan because that visible connection wasn’t there. I simply found a way to make it myself! I’ve been doing that for well over a decade, just as I’ve also been loving how technology makes that ability to stay connected easier with each new development. I know I love the tabbing feature in Firefox. Hurray for change! :p
