It doesn't seem to be doing anything.

One of my teaching activities of long ago was a pair of meetings with a group of teachers in Netanya. On the whole I preferred lenghtier classes because although I was able to recite all that I thought was important to learn in an hour and a half, what was important wasn't hearing these things, but practicing them, and practice only comes with, well ... practice.

At the first of these meetings I was busy running from computer to computer, trying to overcome the numerous technical problems that had unexpectedly developed. These were the standard sort of problems of back then - the computers could either log-in to the internal network or to the internet, and if the teachers had clicked on Okay instead of entering a password, they logged into the network and thus had to restart the computers in order to click correctly and get to the internet. And then of course there were problems with Hebrew.

It was while running from computer to computer, showing here how to bookmark a page, or there where to click on a link, that I noticed a group of teachers sitting quietly around one of the computers. I asked them if anything was the matter, and they told me that I hadn't told them to start doing anything so they didn't know what to do. I pointed to the other teachers around them who seemed to be actively doing something with the computers in front of them and asked if those teachers had received instructions, to which I received the response that they weren't afraid to take chances.

This cartoon is over six years old, but it's a reflection not only of a certain period in time, but of a certain approach to technology in general. Athough since the cartoon first appeared internet use has become an integral part of our daily lives, the fear and trepidation that was prevalent then is still very common among many people.

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