Technology can be beautiful

The kids from California were full of questions.
It was a Wednesday afternoon, and through the wonders of the Internet I was simultaneously sitting in front of a computer at home in Indiana and teaching a class at South Pasadena High School.
And, honestly, how cool is that?
Like a lot of folks my age, I grumble about the Internet now and then.
I don’t like the way it has disrupted so many traditional businesses like retailing — particularly bookstores — and, for that matter, newspapers.
I’m wary of a media environment in which people find their own biases and prejudices reinforced rather than challenged. I’m suspicious about its long range impact on democracy.
And while I’ll confess to being LinkedIn, I doubt you’ll ever find me on Facebook. (I’m not 100 percent sure why I’m on LinkedIn except that it was enthusiastically endorsed by a friend.)
But despite all that grumbling, I have to admit it’s a great convenience.
Checking email is a routine part of life, even if it means sorting through the occasional kitten video or joke about getting older.
And then there’s Skype.
It ain’t perfect. But it’s the closest thing to flying cars and jet packs — to mention just two of the things that used to pop up on the cover of Popular Mechanics in the 1950s and 1960s — that we enjoy today.
And on that Wednesday afternoon, we put it to use.
I’ve written before about my good friend Andy Lippman. Andy’s a former bureau chief for The Associated Press. He headed up coverage of some very big events, including earthquakes and riots in Los Angeles and the courtroom drama of O.J. Simpson.
His AP career also took him through Indiana, and he’s a Hoosier through and through. During his stint here, Connie and I began to think of him as part of the family and — more than once — suggested that he ought to meet my sister or Connie’s sister to seal the deal.
Andy is also dealing with some very difficult physical challenges involving the worst sort of crippling arthritis that you can imagine. Though he’s only about six months older than I am, he’s been dealing with things like walkers and wheelchairs and endless rounds of medication for years.
But that doesn’t seem to slow him down.
Despite the pain, Andy finds time to work with immigrants studying for their U.S. citizenship test, to serve as an occasional docent in an art museum, to conduct after-school writing workshops for middle school kids, and to help advise the student newspaper at South Pasadena High School. (To know Andy is to be humbled by his undaunted approach to life.)
It was that last one on the list that roped me in.
Andy asked a few months back if I could critique and consult with the staff of the high school paper he’d been working with. Of course, I said yes.
And so I found myself Skyping (if that’s a word) on a Wednesday afternoon.
And it was unbelievably cool.
I’d read the papers carefully, marking them up and writing suggestions in the margins. Then I’d written a few pages of observations and general comments and tried to figure out a strategy for getting the message across.
At first, I was a little leery. Not of the students, but of the technology. So I had daughter Sally walk me through a Skype session. I emerged unscathed.
When the time came, Skype and the Internet worked pretty much flawlessly.
I’d hold a page of the school newspaper up to the camera on my computer so they’d know what I was talking about, then we’d dissect what we saw there.
By the time we were done, I think they had learned something.
I know I did. And I’m grumbling a bit less about the Internet these days.

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