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I attended The W in Columbus, Mississippi for one semester, briefly learning to navigate worlds that were colliding even back then. but as I recently recalled, I waS A STUDENT ATHLETE, ON THE GYMNASTIC TEAM, AND AN UNFORTUNATE INCIDENT WITH A BELT WHILE ATTEMPTING A BACK FLIP MAY WELL HAVE BEEN THE REASON FOR MY MENTAL ILLNESSES THAT RESULTED IN MY FAILURE TO COMPLETE MY EDUCATION THEN. bUT THERE WAS ALSO THE FACT THAT i BECAME PREGNANT, THAT i WAS UNABLE TO CARRY THAT CHILD AND FRANKLY UNWILLING TO DO SO AT THE TIME, THAT BECAME THE REASON FOR MY LEAVING THE w FOR aUBURN, THEN mIAMI dADE, THEN gREENVILLE cOUNTY mUSEUM OF ART, THEN gEORGIA sTATE, THEN sHORTER cOLLEGE, AND FINALLY THE uNIVERSITY OF sOUTH aLABAMA WHERE I FINALLY OBTAINED A certificate OF COMPLETION FOR MORE THAN 267 CREDIT HOURS OF COLLEGE. wHICH IS NOT SOMETHING YOU CAN PUT IN YOUR WALLET. it REPRESENTS MORE THAN 60 YEARS OF EXPERIENCE, A LIFE’S WORTH OF LESSONS LEARNED, AND A WISDOM UNMATCHED BY ANY INCOME LEVEL THAT WOULD SUSTAIN THE REPAYMENT OF THOSE LOANS i TOOK OUT TO MAKE THE JOURNEY. |
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W also stands for my last name, WARLEY, which is cool when you can pronounce it and not be mistaken for that woman who used to be known as Jo Ann Worley, she of the full throated cackle. |
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We WARLEYs have always been conspicuous on some level, and yet there are those who remain convinced that it’s a choice we make to be up front. It is not. We are just out there. Hanging our dirty laundry for all to see.
Forgive this about me. It’s not by choice.
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The press conference I just watched (?) was one more effort to inject a dose of reality into the world that is the United States in 2013. Think about this for a minute: We have everyone focused on one page on a brand new website - everyone. Not just those who wanted this site to succeed but those who absolutely did not want it to succeed as well. And virtually everyone in between. Lost in the insanity is an obvious problem: Those who are digitally literate and those who aren't are not necessarily on the same side. There are plenty of old school democrats walking around with their iPads and iPhones who really don't know diddley about technology. I would put Andrea Mitchell in that category. While I like Andrea, I was struck by her body language (shaking her head no as she was emphatically declaring Obama's newly announced fixes toothless) and wondered how much actual experience she has had with websites, computers and the ongoing effort to bring the US into the digital age that seems never to be realized. It's all about what's in your wallet, I think. Let me try to explain.
My recent experience using Google Wallet has been another of many efforts over more than thirty years where I was one of the first to try some new technology that the majority of my peers were not ready for. As part of an effort to simplify my life I found Google Wallet on my Samsung Galaxy III and jumped on what I thought would be a very simple tool backed by one of the most amazing companies the world has ever seen. I was eager to use it to pay my studio assistant who does everything from helping me clean cat litter boxes to assisting me with setting up computers and other office functions. I wanted a way to give him funds without having to stop and get cash - he's just an occasional helper, not a formal employee, and I don't have a car, so it's hard for me to get to the credit union. So it seemed like a good idea. My studio assistant was not in favor if my rush to be tech savvy with his hard earned cash. I now see that he was right. And yet like Obama and those of us who understand what his ultimate goals are, I'm not sorry I tried. I have not only learned much I would otherwise not have known about, but I've been able to see that change is indeed already here.
Change is good. It must be good for it is inevitable And it’s here. Now. Just not everywhere.
And that's okay. We have a disconnect in this country between the words we use and the experience that those words imply. Let me illustrate with an image of a dear friend, 94 years old when he passed away less than three weeks ago. He was a structural engineer who worked till he was 93, after retiring twice, once from the Army Corps of Engineers and again from Thompson Engineering, a firm here in Mobile, Alabama. He was brought back in to help engineer the Gulf Quest Maritime Museum which is still not completely opened to the public, but because of it's design, there were no experienced engineers who could handle the job. So Trenton E. Toland was brought in. He died after seeing the building fully lit one night in early October. His job was finished. Here is my friend Trenton at age 93.
When I first met Trent I had a really naive idea that since he had worked with computers for nearly his entire career, helping him understand the digital world would not be that difficult. After all, he was used to using email and spreadsheets, and his building designs were being illustrated with the most sophisticated digital illustrations possible. What I did not realize was that I was dealing with someone who had been deaf for 25 years, and who had tuned out much of what he could not understand along the way. In addition to his own frustration with the technology advances around him, he was reduced to having the main communication tools that his friends and family had to work with be a 6 x 9 marker board and a handful of dry erase markers. This meant that we had to find a way to make it as simple as possible to convey things to him, and usually when I tried to introduce him to something like wireless internet and smart phones, he was baffled, limited by the experience he had from the days of dial up and proprietary software systems. Yet he, like all of us, wanted to take advantage of the world around him and he really wanted to understand what was going on. Words like "digital" and "internet" were trip-wires. The concept of a digital wallet would have been completely impossible to fathom for him. His idea of a wallet was fine leather, and the one he always had with him had all his important documents in it: His credit card, his drivers licence and insurance cards, and cash. Always, plenty of cash. Like anyone who grew up dirt poor, he always made sure he had enough gas in his car and enough cash in his wallet.
In my life that has never been the case.
In recent years, I've not even had a car. I certainly never had enough cash. Worse than not having enough, though, for me, was not knowing how much I did have. And google wallet gave me that added assurance that I would be able to know exactly what I had on hand before I spent it. I like that. For years I was the victim of banks and their high fees that robbed me of thousands of dollars as I tried to figure out how they gamed the system. I finally resorted to living on a cash basis for over five years, without a checking account at all. When I went back to school at age 50 I opened a credit union account and now have what is called a checkless checking account which is the same idea as google wallet except for people who have NO CREDIT or bad credit, and I could have easily just used that debit card for my assistant. But I have more important things to do than bookkeeping, and I wanted a way to easily track expenses that would be handy. As handy as having the information "in hand" , on my phone. I like that alot.
My youngest son Matthew was born the same year I discovered what computers could do. 1981 was the year my husband brought home an Apple II+ and I learned how much this new technology could assist me in the daily management of the growing design business I was running at that time. Numerous times over the next two decades I would find a new technology that seemed so obviously innovative and useful that the world would surely adopt it immediately. (or so I thought)
It was a lesson I failed to learn. People resist change. Always. Even me. In fact, as far as google wallet was concerned, I only was attracted to the idea because it was presented to me in the way Google does best: with good graphic design, simple instructions, and clear, concise directions.
Except for one thing:
The world, unbeknownst to me, was not ready for Google Wallet. Not yet.
We are close to being able to get there, but like the Affordable Care Act, there's a bit of re-education and a whole lot of techological infrastructure tweaking that has to take place first.
Some places in the country and the world are ready, of course, In fact, there are places, as I'm sure you know, that smart phones are ubiquitous and obviously, there are hundreds of apps (it’s an APP. You understand? The kid says to his mother right before she points out that maybe he can find an APP to help him explain this fender bender to his , um, FATHER. Gulp.) An app for every need, including some you didn't even know you had. But just as states are different, major retail companies are different as well. Some, like certain retail drug stores, will roll out things in all their stores at once. Others will start with the major cities and the smaller areas will get the new technology rollout much later. Apparently that's what is going on with Google Wallet.
Here's what happened. I transferred $100 to Google Wallet without wondering how I could actually access the money when I needed to pay my assistant. That led me to a crash course in what NFC and Tap and Pay meant, and I then was curious to know where and who was actually familiar with the technology. Realizing that I'd spent over a year helping an elderly neighbor and probably had not been paying attention to the new developments in technology around me, I thought maybe I was going to walk out into the world and everyone would know what Google Wallet was. In fact, they did. If you talk to people who eat at Wendy's or McDonalds. But that's not what I was trying to do. I didn’t need to use it for burgers.
And feeling sorry for my assistant, I decided that he and I would both go to Walmart to see if they knew about this new thing. No. Not even in the electronics department. Or the new customer operated scanning machines. While they might actually be able to use the tap and pay technology, apparently no one knew that they knew and that the aging granny in front of them might know more than themselves was enough to make even that communication dicey., and so I left empty handed and confused. Then I decided to send my assistant back to get a Walmart Debit card, which was easy enough to do (although it cost him another $20) and easy to transfer money to. But then, of course, we had to wait to use the card till the actual one came in the mail. Meanwhile the good folks at the help center (the GOOGLE WALLET HELP CENTER, of course, were great. They were polite, efficient, and accurate in answering any question I asked.
I just didn't know to ask all the questions till I went through the entire exercise. See how this works? I would call the help center and they would guide me and help me correct things I'd done, and then I'd try another way to get at my money. Transferring the sum back to my bank was yet another learning experience. Because of the fact that the federal reserve is involved, there is a "tiny test deposit" that has to show up in your account (3-5 days at best but because of the Veterans Day holiday it took longer for me) and then the transfer can be initiated. Here's where the linguistics get really tricky, though. When I asked the google help expert if the tranfer would happen instantaneously, I was told that yes, it would be instantaneous. I found out that was only half true. Yes, the transfer was immediate, but the deposit into my bank account was still going to take 2-3 days. Seriously. Seriously??? How many ways did this make my face redden is only now beginning to be apparent.
I could have emailed the money to my assistant and he would have had it immediately. Or I could have used PayPal which I have used for years. But I did neither of those things, so my money, or at least $80 of it, was still in limbo. But, and here's the really fascinating part, the $20 I left in Google Wallet I used to go see if any of the vendors in my local area had the technology that would allow me to use the Smart Phone and "Tap and Pay'.
I was now determined to find at least one vendor that used this technology and knew how it worked.
The app to download gives you a list of nearby PayPass terminals. It said a Chevron Station only 3 miles from me was one of them. I had my doubts. But off I went in my assistant's car to see if we could get gas. Not no, but hell no. One of the employees didn't have any clue what I was talking about, and the other one was smart enough to get the owner on the phone, and because many gas stations have a major brand name such as CHEVRON but are owned by small mom and pop businesses, the owner not only didn't know about it but she didn't want to know either. She was completely unfamiliar with the entire concept I was talking about. I seriously doubt she even knows that there is something called Google Maps that lists her station as having a PayPass terminal. But here's the really frustrating part. That station DID have a pay pass terminal. An old one. I studied it carefully and realized that it was rather old, and only had one light on the top as opposed to the four lights I'd seen in all the photos of the Tap and Pay and Google Wallet ads. So I deduced that likely many of the retail merchants were not as up to date as I'd been thinking that they were.
And so I went back to the phone and called Google Wallet and yelled. And ranted. And raved. Because I've been down this road before. I'm tired of it. And I'm aware that part of the problem is that while big companies on the West Coast or in New York are moving in the right direction, they are often not aware that the further you get from the major metropolitan areas, the less informed the populace is. If they are aware of this fact they are willfully ignorant of how it affects the customer and the reputation of said product that is being rolled out. And I know without a shadow of a doubt that the digital divide is the problem. With the whole world. Seriously. We all know that. But it hasn't mattered to a whole country till now.
When Obama rolled out the ACA, I'm sure his staff and he were not expecting that his most complicated problem would be how to gently take the nation through a completely transformative experience that they were not ready for. And yet he has had to do that .
Some of us are aware as we watch the GOP embarrass themselves with how little they understand technology (and it's even more embarrassing because they don't even know how little they understand) but only someone who has been running into these crazy roadblocks to change for two and three decades can really appreciate how many landmines the president's people have already overcome. Obama mentioned it when he talked about the election today.
The people who worked on the campaign realize how pervasive the digital divide is. The fact is that Red America still doesn't get it. They still don't know what all they don't know.
For instance: I make digital art. I have given up explaining that. It's just not worth the effort. I realize that I live in a world that doesn't have a clue what digital art is. It’s made by my digits? I digitize it. It appears as a digital image on a flat span of surface that is made up of x’s and o’s or OFF and ON switches. I sometimes create this digital art by means other than digital, and then I SCAN it. Rather than be picky about the terms here, let’s just go with that for now. It’s late. I’m exhausted. And it’s not even 2013 any more. I’m now writing from the space/time continuum that makes it hard to share with you how much I hate the fact that you people aren’t keeping up. Even Ross Perot could see (and benefit by) that! I’ve even tried to SHOW what digital art is by means other than explanation. Just today I was caught trying to sneak a USB drive into a Vizio Smart TV — “don’t do that, I can’t be responsible for it. What are you trying to do? It being a monday after the city had been invaded by Rugby players on holiday from their respective humdrum worlds I decided to concede and give up the quest for a disiplay of my digital art on a digital device. And yet my friend doing the protesting was a recent sufferer of the highest order from the depths of his grief over the LSU team he loves being steamrolled by the Mighty Red (Crimson) tide. And so it goes. Especially down here in the swampland.
The fact that my art is made on the computer and can be printed on almost any surface and that there is NO ORIGINAL is what is so hard to fathom. That plus how I created it in the first place. People my age in this part of the country are still trying to figure out how to use their cell phones, and most of them are retired from jobs where they had to fight the clunky old computers that their companies grumbled about having to buy. So I have a reason to want to get back to making art on my desktop, laptop and yes, smartphone (using Sketchbook Pro) while my assistant does some of the things I don't have time to do. So I tried one more time. My youngest son works for Ryder Logistics and handles the CVS account for the stores in our region. I thought I'd check to see if my local CVS had the Pay Pass terminals. I called the one four blocks from my house. The girl who answered didn't know what I was talking about when I asked if they had the type of terminal that you could use your smart phone with. She said no.
I was about to give up, but then I decided to ask her if the terminals had one light or four at the top. FOUR! I told her I'd be right there. My trusty assistant drove me to the store and I grabbed a pint of half&half out of the cooler. "Watch this," I brag.
Having watched a video of how to do this, I proudly touched my SGIII to the terminal, and hearing a beep, I was thrilled! Oops, not so fast.
I took the phone away too quickly and the transaction did not complete.
She smiled, and looked at her register. I tried it again, and this time I held it until the transaction completed and I heard the second tone.
Woohoo! I'd used Google Wallet in Mobile, AL. MOBILE, Freaking, Alabama.
I feel like I've discovered gold! I was so tickled I came back and called Google and yelled at them some more. No, really, I did ask them to find me someone that I could talk to about the machines and try to figure out how this was going to work. I knew that Google knew what they were doing, but I wasn't so sure Google understood what they were dealing with in this part of the world. So yesterday, a wonderful voice called me from First Data, the company that partners with Google -- the one who makes the machines themselves. And that's when I learned that not even a city like Atlanta has many of these terminals yet.
Just like the new health care law, these things take time. There are financial reasons why companies can't go ahead by themselves and put in new technology or new products until there is a good sense that the public is ready and the technology will work. They call it LOGISICS. They charge mega bucks to give you a degree in that, but it’s still just transportation management. The logic of it all is lost on most of us.
See? It's simple. We all have to stop shooting the messenger and thank Obama for being the classiest, most hip president we have ever had. And get behind him. We have to have his back. He's got ours.HE HAS HAD OURS ALL ALONG
And try Google Wallet. It's pretty cool. But just be sure your machines have four lights on the top.