Does anyone have a cure for technophobia?

Lynne Patrick

I’ve been a bit – OK, a lot – of a technophobe all my life. Regular Dead Guy visitors will know the saga of my mobile phone. I finally ditched the charger in the course of a grand clearing our of cupboards last weekend.

 

But it all began much earlier than that. Cutting edge word processing technology during my college days was a portable typewriter, and for people with generous parents, a little pocket-sized tape recorder so a more diligent friend could record the early-morning lectures for them. Me, I swore I’d never learn to type because it would consign me to the secretarial pool. And sad though it sounds, I was usually the diligent friend.

 

Later, when everyone I knew was buying those natty little Amstrad word processors, I swore off computers in any shape or form. For one thing, I never learned to type. For another, it was a fad which wouldn’t last…

 

Trouble is, twenty years later the fad seems to have caught on big time. But have you noticed how many of the words it uses have four letters? Ebay; Face Book; spam; even blog. Doesn’t that tell you something?

 

I have an awful feeling I’m going to have to mend my ways and actually find out how all this stuff works. A few weeks ago I took on a young woman looking for work experience in publishing; she spends one day a week in the office with me, and some of the words she uses seem to belong to some alien language. I always thought Face Book (or is it FaceBook?) was something 13-year-olds used to chat to their chums when their phones ran out of credit. Apparently it’s an invaluable marketing tool which will bring Crème’s books to the attention of thousands of crime fiction fans. And in the current economic climate (which I promised myself I wasn’t going to mention today, but it looks like we can’t escape from it) we need all the invaluable marketing tools we can get. Alex, my work experience assistant, is on the case. Thanks, Alex.

 

This is the time of year when my biggest technological adventure ever, the Crème de la Crime website (www.cremedelacrime.com, but don’t visit just yet – see below) comes centre stage. Which is probably why technology is on my mind today. I decided a few years ago against the kind of all-singing, all-dancing, all-changing website which updates itself daily with little bits of news no one but us is really interested in. Ours gets a major overhaul once a year, when we’ve planned our new list and there’s actually some news to impart. And sometimes we add essential information halfway through the year, like the Criminal Tendencies competition which has just closed. The plan is to have all the new stuff up and running in early January. Which is terrifyingly close...

 

(I say we add. Actually we wouldn’t know where to begin. A lovely, talented, technologically minded guy called Phil takes care of all that. And you may be sure that wherever in the cyber-world Creme de la Crime makes a guest appearance, someone else did the needful.)

 

OK, I know what you’re thinking: this is the 21^st century, why doesn’t she start living in it and make use of all the opportunities technology offers?

 

Excuse me while I bury my spinning head in that nice cool pile of sand for a moment. 

 

I know. I know. But it’s OK for all you bright young things who were born with a keyboard grafted on to your fingers. Some of us have to learn how to do it. And it takes time – always in short supply around here. And it’s scary.

 

But if anyone knows of a cure, or even a temporary treatment, for possibly the worst case of chronic technophobia this side of the Atlantic, please send it to me. Not by text; I don’t have a mobile phone any more.

 

I know how to work e-mail. Surely that’s a start.