Tuesday, May 19, 2009 2:00 PM EST

A Boomer Techie Speaks Out

by Deborah Levine, Guest Blogger

I am not of the generation that is typically known for its cyberspace savvy. I am a Baby Boomer with degrees in people-oriented areas: cultural anthropology and urban planning. Yet, I have found my voice and my business on the web through my online magazine, the American Diversity Report. How did a classically-educated, British colonial (Bermuda) end up on the cutting edge of cyberspace?

In 1965, I started my senior year in high school intending to study medieval history, music and Russian. I cringed when my mother insisted I enroll in a new elective: matrix algebra. “It’s computers, sweetheart, your future,” she said in her lilting, island-girl voice. Well acquainted with the steel fist behind that soft voice, I entered the Matrix with only minimal kicking and screaming. The experience seemed out of space and time; I never used a computer as an undergraduate at Harvard. Not until 1971 did I generate my first computerized statistical report. I was at the University of Cincinnati where the mainframe took up an entire building and I needed a suitcase to carry home the hard copy. This was my future!? Ten years later, I was back in graduate school at the University of Illinois at Chicago where the mainframe only took up one floor of the building. The degree now required computer expertise in generating statistical reports. I registered as a beginner, but the professor insisted I moved to an intermediate section. I complied with much kicking and screaming. He calmed me saying, “Don’t worry. You won’t hurt anything unless you get frustrated and kick in the monitor.” Heart in mouth, I consoled myself imagining a computer-free career in community organizing.

Confident my computer days were over, I became director of an interfaith nonprofit project. After only six months, my office purchased a computer network and a young man was hired to oversee computer operations. We installed the system before he came on board and when we ran into problems, I was the only person remotely, and I do mean remotely, able to fix it. A computer techie talked me through the process by phone, like an emergency plane landing. I opened the hard drive and cleaned it with a pencil eraser as instructed. While I kicked and screamed quietly to myself, I made my peace with the fact that computer expertise is accumulative and fast-moving, waiting for no man or new hire.

In 1990, my Mother’s Day gift was a personal computer and printer. I proceeded to create my first nonprofit and first newsletter from a home office the size of a closet. I became expert at the graphics, the editing and the simple formatting. My writing became fast, efficient and marketable. Over the next decade, I was Managing Editor for several agencies, including my own. By 2001, the demand for access outstripped my e-mail capacity and I commissioned my first website. The PDF newsletter went online and attracted hundreds of readers every month. And then came the revolution. In 2006, I started to think Big Picture. Out went the PDF files and in came Joomla with graphics and photos. A career center and a store soon followed. The mission of the American Diversity Report (ADR) evolved into building a consortium of volunteer writers from around the world. Although it seemed like chaos and information overload at the time, my colleagues say that I was actually pioneering social networking. As the social network aspect of the ADR became my focus, I trolled sites looking for articulate writers. But I also sought out the raw voices, propelled by my motto, “Real diversity for real people.”   They reminded me of myself, invested in their community, but aiming for an international presence. Some were sophisticated about the internet, constantly posting to the web. Others didn’t realize they had a compelling story to tell. These are the activists that I nudged into the ADR’s universe with one-on-one mentoring.

Forever tracking statistics, we watched the American Diversity Report acquire almost 25,000 readers monthly in more than 60 countries. Our Alexa ranking of 14 million went to 450,000. Thoroughly hooked on the web, I explored social and professional networks including FaceBook and LinkedIn. I spent hours every day answering every invitation, every e-mail and every business solicitation. Bleary-eyed and overwhelmed, I had joined the world of cyberspace addicts. There was no day, no night, no national borders; just a perpetually chaotic In-box. Slowly, I began to exert control and create new worlds.

My generation has the capacity to create with formidable depth. We can combine technology with an historic perspective, literary finesse and an instinctive futurism. We are not solely on the internet, as one TV pundit recently commented, to check out the weather. Yes, our arrival on the net was random and chaotic. But the most creative place in the universe is the edge of chaos. The longer we stand at the edge of chaos, the more we become portals of knowledge and universal translators of reality. Having chosen to remain at the edge, I’m like the hub of a spinning wheel whose spokes are writers and readers from around the globe. Together we hurtle through cyberspace at the speed of an internet connection. And as the online cosmos expands, so do we.

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