Straight from The Horse’s Mouth

Craig Blaylock My mom, Laura St John, has been kind enough (and seemingly grateful) to have me write in her stead this week. It took quite a bit of thinking before the obvious subject for conversation struck me. In her column, she usually talks about THM and the interesting stories from her history. Since I am young and deficient in the latter, my topic arises from my recent experience with my business venture right here in Buffalo.

If you haven't heard by now, I'm Craig Blaylock, the owner and operator of Craig's TechGeek Services (currently housed in the back of The Horse's Mouth). It's been seven weeks since I started offering my services here, and I'm glad to say it's been an enlightening experience so far. But of all the discoveries and learning experiences, one thing that sticks out most in my mind is the relationship between the older generation and their computers.

I was born in the summer of 1987; which puts me right on the leading edge of the Millennial Generation, the first cadre of humans born with no experience of the world before email, computerized stock exchanges, and with cell phones more powerful than the original, roomsized supercomputers. I grew up with a peculiar interest in all sorts of digital doohickeys, often skipped lunch to hang out on the machines at the library in high school, and I've clocked more hours of face-time with LCD screens than books or magazines.

So there's no particular wonder or amazement on my part when it only takes me five seconds to go from reading a scientific treatise on the effects of breakthroughs in microfluidics research on synthetic biology to videoconferencing with people in Denmark via last month's hit social website, Chatroulette (which went out of fashion last week).

But then I come to work here in Buffalo, and I'm suddenly thrust into a world that seems so alien to me. The surly strangers that I passed by in the city have been replaced with friendly people who stroll into the shop happy to see me behind the counter; but the machines that I'm so familiar with are sluggish, unresponsive, and stutter incomprehensibly. Thus, I have taken it upon myself to repair them and teach their owners to make more effective use of them.

Yet, aside from a few notable exceptions, the relationship with the older generation and technology between that big city and this small town seems to be synonymous. The Greatest Generation and the Baby-Boomers usually own computers equally generational as themselves (computer years being something like two or three times quicker than dog years). I think there's something very American about the way one can travel two hundred miles from a sprawling metropolis to a quiet town off the highway to see the same kinds of situations between people and their machines. Just like the big cities, Small Town USA is finding that technology is gradually becoming an indispensable extension of our usable brainpower. A computer is like a second brain that we keep outside our heads. It might be addled, slow, or forgetful sometimes, but who couldn't use another hand to help keep track of everything?

And if your extra brain is having a nervous breakdown, give me a call. I'm here to help.