Confessions of a tech writer

 Confessions of a tech writer

 

“You may be a writer, but you don’t know jack about technology,” said the owner of the satellite TV magazine where I was editor. Maybe he was right—I never even learned to operate a satellite dish.

 

Moving on,  I found a job at the Kiplinger Letter, where I was considered a technical guru. If I worked for a satellite magazine, I must be, right?

 

So I wrote about the latest in computers, mobile phones and social media from 1992 until I retired in 2009, a heady time in the tech industry. I didn’t necessarily understand how these things worked, but I interviewed people who did. If some expert called me to complain “you got that all wrong,” I would listen carefully and ask the person to be a contact. They were my best sources! 

 

I went to tech conferences and heard the likes of Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs describe their latest breakthroughs. We were all amused at one meeting when Gates’ power point display went dark and his staff couldn’t fix it. No one is immune! At one convention, I saw young  women at a Japanese company’s booth taking pictures with their cell phones. What? Who would want to do that? But I wrote about it anyway. 

 

My proudest moment came after I wrote a two-page special section on the future of the Internet in 1995 (ancient days in that field.)  Years later, it was a featured article posted in the company’s  first-floor museum in an exhibit called: “From Gutenberg to the Internet.”

 

I admit I didn’t get everything right. I was confronted in the late 1990s by the Y2K issue: the prospect of computers failing when the new century began, with machines misinterpreting “00” as the year 1900. A doomsayer bought our mailing list and put out his own newsletter forecasting disaster on Jan. 1. I got dozens of calls from panicky readers.. One man asked me to talk his father out of selling his house and moving to a cabin in the mountains.

 

I must admit that I absorbed some of this fear and may have written some worrisome stories about it. Fortunately, my editor toned them down. When the century began, there was no calamity even in countries like Italy, which had taken no precautions. I was roasted about this mercilessly at a retirement event. I deserved it.