Over a mountain of snow, on the ski lift, at Tahoe, Nevada side, I tried to converse with this young snowboarder. Ski lifts stop and go that day. It can be a long ride uphill, even longer in silence.
And it became too short. This kid (a late teenager) has her own domain; she has her own blog, photo galleries, and an on-line fiction in the works. She is adept with Photoshop, PHP, JavaScript, sound editing (so that she can PodCast), video editing (so that she can YouTube), etc. She does not know what OS the server runs. She interacts with the host server via ftp and a simple “control panel” interface. She pays for these services out of her allowance: about US$30 for 6 months.
What has this world come down to? This is an ordinary wiz kid. She has skills and resources available only to highly paid, well budgeted professionals with several years ago. Yet she believes she is just a kid trying to snowboard better. What used to be a career is now a junior’s hobby, and not even a serious one. (Her hobby is snowboarding and creative writing. Web is for keeping up with her friends.)
Am I so out of touch with the real world now? I can hear my kid teasing me, “Daddy, you are oohhld.”
I went home, registered a domain, and signed up a hosting service. I downloaded WordPress and experienced their famous 5-minute installation. I perused a large collection of themes, chose one, and customized it with simple PhotoShop and a bit PHP. After that, I imported most of my current blog entries. The whole thing took about few hours over 3 days. The theme selection and customization took the longest time.
What an experience! The kid is much less impressive and intimidating after. I have experienced, first handedly, probably a bit late, this new world I am living. I can do everything the kid did at ease (technically speaking, not content-wise or stylistically) and at the price that is negligible to all businesses. It is easy, it is cheap, it serves all purposes. The technologies have matured for the mass.
Embrace for impact.
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