I’VE read so many posts about major traffic jams, I can’t help but recall how I dealt with the humongous jams whenever I’m in the national capital.
Sitting while traffic stands still can make you restless, more so if you have a companion who clucks and rants a lot. As I’m always a rider and not a driver, I used to spend my time just browsing through social media. But that is a lot of wasted time, and so I made use of the smartness of my phone.
On my phone, I can arrange audio files and mix them, not as an ordinary playlist would, but edit the whole thing. That’s using a free audio editing app I downloaded. Of course, you can write articles and letters, and make presentations. And you can even make videos for digital sharing. You practically have an editing studio in your hand, and I am in awe.
In a talk to my colleagues at SunStar a few months back, I encouraged the young team to never stop learning because things are changing fast. I am from the generation who worked with typewriters and had our articles crisscrossed with angry red ink corrections. Peryodiko Dabaw, the newspaper SunStar bought and turned to SunStar Davao, was the first community newspaper in town to embark on desktop publishing in 1986 with floppy disks to boot up a computer and green letters on dark screens on your monitors for word processing.
I was the first employee made to handle the desktop publishing program, taught by the publisher/owner himself Pidiong Damaso. I, who has not handled any graphic program in my life then, was made to sit down and watch as Pidiong did the layout for four nights. And then he disappeared. There was no cellphone at that time, so if he’s not in his office and at home, there was no way to know where he was. So I booted up the Apple computer (it wasn’t known as a Mac then) and worked on my first ever computerized layout using Aldus Ventura 1.0. I’ve been keeping up with the graphics program hence. I’m using a CC 2018 now.
Being the innately techie person, although unschooled, I was the go-to person for computer-related problems. I don’t know how, but would always managed to fix whatever glitches or teach an unfamiliar command in spreadsheets, and even dabbled in SPSS when I was doing a market survey. Then it was off to bigger things like HTML, where you literally have to type each command because we didn’t have a website developer program. This kept me up till dawn, but I was young and had limitless energy. I left as an organic member of SunStar when we already firmed up our lead in social media reporting in all forms – written, online, published, updates, live feeds, edited videos, online polls, everything.
From typewriters and IBM electric typewriters with daisy wheels to a digital newsroom: Imagine how the present tools today will develop. Imagine how everything will change. A mobile phone where you can type, do graphics, video and audio, and send emails was not even in our imagination then. This only means an ever-evolving media and never-ending learning. Don’t waste time on social media and games. Use social media as a tool just as your phone has become the most ubiquitous tool in our digital world.
saestremera@gmail.com