By...“Poking and Clicking” “You gotta keep poking and clicking,” a friend tells me. “That’s what my daughter does.”By this, she means that learning new technology is not a straight path. I have to play with it. I have to find the process of learning fun and challenging and not get hung up when I make mistakes along the way.I know I’m not the only one who finds the “poke and click” mindset a challenge when I just want to get the darned thing done and move on to something I enjoy. Like reading a book. With real pages.My current frustration is with my phone. I use my phone for taking photos and, occasionally, for making actual phone calls. I don’t do well with texting. If you send me an email (and I hope you do!), I’ll likely respond within minutes because I am sitting at my computer all day pretending to write. Getting an email gives me an excuse to leave whatever I am working on and send off a cheery note.My phone, on the other hand, sits on the corner of my desk, ignored. It must make a noise or something when people text me, but I never notice. It isn’t until I pick it up to make an actual phone call (which could be a very long time) that I see I have a message.“Uh-oh. I hope it’s not Mom.” It won’t be my mom. She learned her lesson ages ago and no longer sends me text messages because I never see them. She sends me an email, which—she will tell you—I respond to immediately.I have never bonded with my phone. I don’t use it much because I’m already on my computer. I have this gigantic monitor, and switching over to the itty-bitty screen doesn’t make sense to me. I might have to put on my reading glasses. I don’t see the point.The result is that I don’t know how to use my phone very well. But my phone isn’t helping me any. It doesn’t even take pictures easily. The response time is so slow that the person I am trying to photograph has allowed the smile to fade from their face. The dog I am photographing has been distracted and is looking in the other direction. The sun has gone under a cloud—or possibly set— before my phone gets around to snapping a photo.“You need a new ...
