Bio-wise and otherwise

Font-ly speaking

Earlier on, while working as a science editor in a newspaper, I used to come across many interesting personalities. From this rather long list, Ramu’s name deserves a special mention.

Ramu was our office attendant, who was always in a hurry to absorb gigabytes of jargon, like a well-used sponge. But there were a few bugs in his neural wiring, and it showed on occasion.

When we started a syndicated column written by Bill Gates  in our IT page, the readers’ feedback came pouring in through boxes, doors…even windows! The Gates-ian era was at its peak, which was probably why an awestruck Ramu would actually place these letters reverently on my table, lest they get crumpled in a rather unwholesome manner.

One morning, a nattily dressed American gentleman entered the office. A visibly excited Ramu clumsily dropped a few postcards and stared unabashedly at the gentleman, who was ambling towards my desk. Actually, the American gentleman had dropped by to pass on an invitation to a conference. But no sooner had the gentleman turned his back, than did Ramu rush to my side, eyes wide with amazement. Pointing to the receding figure with shaking fingers, he asked hoarsely, “Madam, was that Bill Gates?”

Thanks to the power of print technology, Ramu had actually heard of the ‘soft man with the hard business drive.

Once again a while later, Life did a barn dance in our newspaper office, when Quark Express was installed to make pages. Earlier on, Ramu often lent a helping hand to the old production workers who used to manually insert photographs between reams of text. By the end of the day, a minister may have half his beard snipped out of his photograph, but at least he was lovingly displayed on the page, thanks to these old-timers.

Then suddenly Quark software came along, doing all the cutting and pasting needed for a lifetime. It beveled, trimmed, earmarked, and watermarked to perfection! Ramu was thrilled by this new technology.

"Quack can paste in seconds!" he gushed.  "But it cannot squeeze a photo into gutter space, can it?" retorted the old helpers. For a moment Ramu was at a loss for words. He needed to figure out what ‘gutter space’ was first, before coming up with a befitting answer.

One day, Ramu trudged into the office and announced the birth of yet another newfangled technology. News was going online, he said. We all groaned in unison. It only meant fewer papers and more computers. A few days later, the entire editorial staff was summoned for a high-level meeting and instructed to learn ‘Hyper Text Markup Language’. “Like English and Kannada, no?” asked an enthused voice from the front row. It was Ramu’s.

Soon modern technology invaded every nook and cranny of our idyllic publishing world, ‘cutting’ some of us out of the print ‘n paper era and ‘pasting’ us into those ‘winsome virtual vistas’. We learnt that ‘bugs’ weren’t merely crawly creatures. ‘Fifo’ wasn’t the name of a pet poodle. And ‘Framemaker’ just didn’t give you an hour- glass figure.

With growing Web 2.0 technology, will this scene slowly fade away? 

After having joined the software industry, I lost touch with the print industry. Now I was floating in a world of manuals, guides, wikis and white papers. I didn't really bother to think of how the newspaper industry was coping with the social networking, bookmarking and all that other jazz going on.

Until recently, when I met Ramu once again in a shop. He stood there standing agape, like a woefully confused member of the Piscean order. Then he asked with no preamble:

'Madam, what is 'blog' ?”

NOTE: Stories apart, here's an interesting blog on how many British newspapers got Web 2.0'd. Also check out Jonathan's recent blog entry which has a video of a panel discussion- topic is 'how integration of technology, media and society impact culture'.

Posted at 02:32AM Jul 11, 2007 by Manju in Sun  |  Comments[2]