By: Taban Khajehnassiri
To begin with, let me first say that if you are reading this on a
webpage in my site, please kindly note that this is only an
article authored by me not a Net-misunderstanding made By Taban Khajeh Nassiri as it's been started so from the top of the article :)
- Thanks for your
Net-Understanding! :)
Six or seven years ago, sorry but I cannot remember the exact date, it was a time when we Iranians started to get familiar with a western thing shaped and changed the life of mankind on this planet. It was called - no I am not talking about computers, we used to work with computers many many years ago, about hundreds of thousands years ago, I believe when we were called prehistoric men who lived before the web was invented. :) - yes, Modem! I can now clearly recall it, the first time I got connected by a modem to a local BBS, with two or tree more people online, testing and experiencing it just like prehistoric men trying bones and stones to find another way to survive two, three or more days at a given prehistoric era. It was us and our prehistoric way of knowing and understanding new things, new environments, new rules and regulations, new tools and their applications.
I send out my first paging message to another fellow human being I found connected to the BBS: "Salam! Chetori?" -( A "Hi" and "How Are You?" Kind of Message. - was not a badd way to initiate a good and mutual dialogue online!) - She (later I found out that She was a He) responded "Hi! How Are You?", I said, "I am just fine, thank you! And you? What a great BBS we are in, isn't that great?" - She (I mean He) said, "Man, Engilisim Ziaad Khoob Nist, Faris ya Penglish Benevis! " - which can be Translated as: "My English is not enough good, Write to me in Farsi or use Penglish!" - I thought "hey... come on, it was YOU who first started to talk and write in English, not me, I was just using the english letters and words to start this dialogue with you! Anyway, I continued to write again in Penglish: "Baasheh! Esm-e shoma chieh?" (OK! What's your name?) She (He, I insist) paged me back: "UserID-e man MoonlighLady hast, amma esmam Hassan hastesh!" - which can be Translated again as: (My UserID is "MoonlighLady", but my name is "Hassan") - I knew it, I was then getting familiar with the nets and nuts at the same time, I thought he must have been out there to find a SunnyBoy who was a Mitra or Nahid (Maybe Barbara or Monica in English :) in the realistic world. I wrote back to him in Penglish, "OK! My name is Taban, but don't be misunderstood, I am a He not a She - as it can be confused or misunderstood by or regarding my first name which some folks in Iran put, use or know this name on girls." For months, he couldn't believe that I am a man until we met each other in a BBS Users gathering later that year. At our meeting, I was thinking all the time about misunderstandings of this wonderful era of computers and technologies.
There are so many instances of this kind you may know as net users and net surfers nowadays. On the net today, you see many websites and many pages, containg many various contents and materials, misleading you to where you were not after, not at all. You participates in chat rooms and send or receive instant messages of Love and Hate, aiming at Wars or Peace, looking for friendship or relationship, asking for help or giving just a hand to those who may need it the most. On the net, we can read, we can write, we can see things and talk, and recently - experienced by some scientists - we can even touch and feel online. There are many people online using these networks and facilities. They understand each other fully? Do you think so? I don't think so. There are a world of all Net-Misunderstandings now chatting or paging or writing online.
About two years ago, - as far as I can just recall it so - I wrote an article for one of my
Free newsletters called Webfaqt Weekly News. The title of that article was "Upgrade Your
Brain!", yes, I wrote that article and I sent it to the mailing list with other news and
updates as well as articles including some management tips and links as a newsletter. Almost
instantly after sending out that edition of my newsletter and updating the page containing that article, I received emails with messages of : "Who do you think you are? ... Who do you think you are talking to? ... OK! OK! We will upgrade our mind! But you'd better go and upgrade yours too! etc." At the time, I couldn't have that Net-Understanding needed to find out what's going on and what wass wrong with the newsletter's content I had sent to our Opted In subscribers. However, then I found out why. It was only a Net-Misunderstanding.
I had to write to my subscribers to clarify and clear the air at the same time. I knew it's the net and poeple make mistakes all the time and it is inevitable somehow to send out something prepared and authored to a number of poeple without any mistakes, errors or even typo in formal writings or punctuations. I had to think twice before thinking, before writing and even before sending out to al large number of subscribers and readers from around the globe with different languages, traditions, attitudes and cultures. Thinking was yet another long and hard process. Again, I thought about it and I started to read more about it. I searched the net, participated in chat rooms, wrote to people and interviewed them, I asked many net sufers many questions regarding the things similar to my own issue. I began to call it Net-Misunderstanding when I first wrote it on a piece of paper, as a yet another project to gather more information for it, read more about it and made surveys more about it. Once I even called it E-Misunderstanding. I was thinking about it as a whole process of actions and reactions, the issue of sending and receiving instant messages and emails on the net. The critical issue is that we are all human beings working with these networks and computers, clients and/or servers.
Just recently, a dear friend of ours, filled in one of our forms to let us know that he is willing to cooperate with us for the betterment of one of our projects. As we receice many emails and online messages, we have decided not to respond immediately to reduce any possible net-misunderstandings. We file most of our emails and reply when needed. At the same time, we has personalized all our out-going newsletters for the effects that this process may make. Then we sent out our recent All-Visitors newsletter to our signed in subscribers to let them know about news and updates of our site. In the subject line, we have our personalized subject with the name of our Subscriber, and then comes the title of my recent article: "I Know and I have Enough of What It Takes ..." - That dear friend using an AOL Email Account - AOL Email Accounts can not view HTML Newsletters properly and read messages as TEXT only. - found out and read our newsletter as a personal email from me starting firmly first with some Ad-Copies and then my article's title that I know and I have enough of what it takes ..." - The situation was all prepared for a great Net-Misunderstanding that : "We don't need you or your help" when sent out as a personalized message: "Amir, I know and I have Enough of What it Takes..." - The other day I received an email: "Hey what was the matter?!": "I tried to help and sent an email last month, but Mr. Nassiri responded that he is fine and has enough material to work on that project ... ." - Wow! What a Net-Misunderstanding! What could I say? I noted that he was using an AOL account, he has received our personalized newsletter and taken it as a personal letter from me.
It was a cold early morning in Tehran. I was starting just another busy day, with a simple connection to the World Wide Whirlpool, as a daily routin of my works, many emails from my website visitors, my clients and my subscribers, I received his email, I thought what was wrong with the newsletter, and me, I found just another instance of Net-Misunderstanding. Yes, I know and I have enough of what it takes to be an entrepreneur, but that was only a title for my recent article. I thought, I have to upgrade my mind once again. The World Web is getting Wider and Wider, my mailing lists and messages are getting in faster and faster, I am drawning in the World Wide Whirlpool deeper and deeper. Unable to breathe, I am a drawning prehistoric man with some prehistoric Tools, Tips, Tricks, Trades and Trends of the Net. I write articles with my hands on this keyboard, I have been the Old Man and The Web, a webmaster writing articles, I even wrote about help on the net, I even wrote Save Our Sites, I sent out my message in the bottle, to the world.
I am standing in front of the mirror. I have been a Taxi Driver all the time these years, I think to myself and I say: "... You talking to me?" "... You talking to me?" Yeah ... I think I know and I have enough of what it takes to receive yet another Mis-Understanding Message from the net. It is almost always normal when you write on the net and to those who may not know you very well or even to those who may find or know you something, somehow, well.