Its a fact that once you learn how to ride a bicycle, short of neurological disorders, you never forget. I had not been on a bike for decades, recently hopped on a CitiBike and within seconds was pedaling, as I used to do, without even holding the handle bars.
How is that possible? Because aptitude is stored within something called procedural memory. Per a quick Google search: “Procedural memory consists of using objects (including musical instruments), as well as movements of the body (such as typing).”
If only my procedural memory was effective enough to work with digital design tools that I had once learned and subsequently forgot. No such luck, I suffer from techno amnesia.
Illustrations: Viktor Koen
Fifteen years ago I retired from my art director job at The New York Times that required basic computer skills. When I left, I left behind my private office, comfy chair, trusty desktop computer … and with in a few weeks almost all of my computer design reflexes that had accumulated over the years of practice. While art director of the Book Review for almost three decades, I learned dozens of methods and technologies—from how to prepare images for the engraver when we printed on letterpress; to how to use an non-design-friendly Harris terminal to set type when the newspaper switched over to photo type; to preparing page comps on the early Apple Classic and Macs mastering Quark, before switching over to InDesign (and its assorted upgrades) that enabled me to build press-ready pages populated with text, Photoshop and Illustrator files. I learned rote basics—enough to get me through the workflow on any given day—but never mastered advanced upgrades (like linking text to image, style sheets and other now-routine stuff). Still, I was functionally competent.
However, when I returned my ID card to HR, my procedural memory was wiped clean. It was like the episode of “Black Mirror” where a man is blocked from contact with people and only sees their static shapes moving about. The erasure was so sudden that the late-great neurologist Dr. Oliver Sacks could have used me as a case study.
I once knew a guy who had suffered from a temporarily paralyzing stroke. After six months in therapy, one-by-one he relearned his mobility and his muscle memory returned. He was fine. Or so his friends believed. Then one day he decided he’d try to play a game of tennis. It was his first time on the court since the stroke, and he was volleying surprisingly well, albeit slowly. In one instance, however, his opponent returned a serve that flew over my friend’s head that caused an unexpected response. He froze in place, unable to move backward. His tennis partner, who luckily had neurological experience, jumped over the net and knew exactly what to do.
Apparently, during therapy, my friend who had the stroke was never taught how to move his body in reverse—he could not take a step backward. The clinical explanation: A condition, called “learned nonuse,” causes the brain to have even more difficulty paying attention to stroke-affected muscles, thereby making it harder to rehabilitate these muscles and over-relying on non-affected parts of the body. This is where the phrase “use it or lose it!” comes from. My friend’s tennis partner new the nature of this phenomenon and simply retaught him to walk backward, then and there.
“Use it or lose it” in my case is presumably solvable. Every day I use Word (an ancient version), Zoom (which I regularly update), FaceTime, Keynote, PDFs, and various other simple things. I can open a file in Photoshop and do rudimentary cropping and sizing but, frankly, that’s not enough to fulfill my workflow needs or creative expectations. Instead, I am forced to do tedious patchwork — workarounds — that too primitive to call “hacks”. Even with cheat-sheets I have problems following procedures. In effect, I have become incompetent. So, when it comes to making my ideas come to life on screen, including animations, GIFs, and whatnot, I must rely on someone else do it for me. I cannot design for print or screen if my life depended on it — and in a way, it does.
I am at an age where there is only so much bandwidth in the brain, and since I do not have to regularly design or make files for a book, magazine or poster, I just pass it on to someone who will follow my direction (or do something better). However, it is no longer a viable solution. It is at best lazy; at worst incompetent.
Fran Lebowitz candidly admitted, a few years ago, on her Netflix special Pretend It’s a City that she did not have any marketable skills—she was useless at anything but driving a cab (which she did for a year) or waiting tables. Lebowitz does not own a computer or smartphone or have an email account. At least I have all the hardware. She also suffers from years of “writer’s blockade.” What saves her is is Lebowitz’s bitingly hilarious wit, or what Ringo Starr once called the “active compensatory factor”. She can make a good living through her talent on the speaking circuit — she doesn’t need to know InDesign or the Adobe Creative Suite.
But I do! Being unable to do all but the simplest design tasks, I am forced to do dumb work-arounds. Instead of learning the latest version of InDesign, I screw around with Word (I cut and paste, then scan and make a PDF). Without an ability to apply Photoshop or Illustrator, I make Keynote slides (take screenshots, that I cut and paste, then make JPEGs for repro). I can cope by stitching things together. But usually, give a rough of what I’m trying to do to someone with skill (and talent). It is not ideal but it is a plan.
An unsustainable bad plan. With A.I. (Apple Intelligence) on the horizon (just waiting to alter the already complex digital world), tech-illiteracy is not a sustainable option. Its time to focus, learn and regain at least some of that eroded and lost competency that is the baseline of design practice. I just hope I have a little brain empowerment left.