Navigating the digital space
Ihave just completed the manuscript for my autobiography. When I started writing it last October, it was in the form of memoirs, a selection of memories in my life journey. But I started covering more events chronologically so someone suggested I should describe it as such.
Many of us born in the ’30s and brought up in the days of typewriters – Smith-corona, Olivetti, or even the vintage Remington Steele, often encounter difficulties adapting to the computer age and digitalization. Thus, I spend more time using apps and devices like correcting errors, using tracking system, and transposing or altering words. And working on footnotes where one must click twice the number.
While the digital age allows collaboration, and for this project, with three editors, one from the US and another from Dumaguete, and later, another two editors with one who helped improve the flow by tweaking chapter titles and summary paragraphs, this co-production also poses problems as dependence on collaborators is not easy especially if one needed to clarify. Then there’s the problem of network garble.
Let me give an example. After the manuscript was laid out by the book design consultant where the original Word format was changed to PDF, and returned to us for proofreading, one copy editor said she would like to have hers converted back to Word format. But when she sent the same to me, it was garbled.
While having multiple collaborators was an advantage as it allowed cross-checking, it also presented difficulties to the one putting them together. There were challenges presented in selecting pictures of varying resolutions. Today, consultants have ways of fixing them through AI and lightroom technology. But editors must learn how to embed them in chapters on Google Drive.
Then the issue of selecting software for indexing. While working with a team with various experiences in use of software, there was the need to agree on whether to use the more traditional MS Word or Indesign. Our indexers had to learn a tutorial on the latter to be able to accomplish the task.
I didn’t intend to bore the reader by citing my experience. I merely wish to drive home that the advantage we derive through an elegant and well designed book is a product of collaboration among several people. It may appear a seamless and smooth process to millennial and techno-savvy professionals, but it could cause elevated blood pressure and anxiety among seniors like me.
But we seniors must admit that digital technology had been a most useful support during the pandemic. Without Facebook and other social media, how could we have been able to bear three years of being isolated from the world? Messenger and chat groups have certainly lessened our isolation from society. Not being proficient in its use had forced us to depend on our relatives and close friends. For aging seniors with poor vision, e-books are a blessing.
But I am certainly glad that I will not be around in the next decade. Coping and adjusting to the digital world was not easy for me and I am sure for more than half of the population of seniors within my age range. My email, Florangel.braid@ gmail.com