Me, a Cyberphobe

I’m a cyberphobe.

From webmaster@cyberphobia.net: a cyberphobe is a person who has an irrational fear of or aversion to computers, specifically, the fear and/or the inability to learn new technologies.

I love new computer technologies, but fear cyberspace, especially scams and glitches. For my condition, I don’t need medication or exposure therapy. I’m getting appropriate help, from my tech tutor. Gently, he suggests possible symptoms I might have: he asked me why I gave the top ranking to all of the books I reviewed for Amazon.com. My answer: because I won’t review a book unless I feel it is excellent — the truth, but a non-answer.

I’ve never written a book. Who am I to badmouth a book that an author has labored over for years? I’ll only review what I think are the best.

If you read this site, I’d welcome what you have to say about cyberphobia. If you suffer from it, what brought it on? How did you overcome it?

Friday the Thirteenth, January 2006, 3:00 p.m. sharp: my tutor arrived. He is not superstitious, and neither am I. We’ll have to see. When we got down to work after my four-week binge of rabid surfing, I felt like an undiagnosed myopic donning corrective lenses for the first time.

By now I was in such despair that I was considering online market research — ten bucks per questionnaire submitted. My tutor hasn’t heard good things about these kinds of opportunities. Sign up for “free”, but then you’re asked to purchase some kind of kit or package for three or four hundred dollars.

For a clear view of cyberspace, you need a lens, and the best lens is your intention. Once again, what would I do on cyberspace? Ask daily.

My tutor didn’t think it would be too bigheaded of me to consider using a blog as a portfolio of writing samples to show to interested online publications. I enjoy writing nonfiction, but I haven’t done much recently. Twenty years ago, I worked as a reporter/photojournalist for a neighborhood paper in southern California. I wrote a profile of a light-and-earth artist/sculpture for an in-flight magazine, and also two catalogs for a vocational rehabilitation network.

Last fall, when the urge to write again hit me, I joined a local writers’ group, which led to an article about the local Quilters’ Guild in the local paper. I “practiced” cyberspace writing on Amazon.

My tutor and I logged on to two blog hosting sites and selected the free one, Blogger.com. Instructions were simple. I selected a template for my site, gave it a name, and pasted my first few paragraphs (“Daydreams for Cyberspace”). What a beautiful blog after so little effort!

In boring earnestness, during my surfing binge, I’d brainstormed for names, coming up with “dreamstoker”, “minderskeepers,” “storystork”, etc. My mind, wanting me to lighten up, offered up “humchum”. Yeah!

Humchum doesn’t mean anything, yet. My tutor likes it. We got silly toward the end of our meeting. His blog portrait is a photo of a baby’s face blocking is own. Could I use my dog’s?