{"id":2787,"date":"2017-08-02T17:05:47","date_gmt":"2017-08-02T17:05:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/futureconditional\/?p=2787"},"modified":"2017-08-02T16:02:57","modified_gmt":"2017-08-02T16:02:57","slug":"the-story-behind-the-story-a-life-in-the-day-of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/futureconditional\/2017\/08\/02\/the-story-behind-the-story-a-life-in-the-day-of\/","title":{"rendered":"The story behind the story: A life in the day of"},"content":{"rendered":"

William Meikle makes a welcome return to Futures<\/a> this week, with his story A life in the day of<\/a><\/em>. Regular readers will know\u00a0that in the past William has tackled a range of topics from problematic fungi<\/a> to difficult data collection<\/a>, taking in the dimming<\/a>, education<\/a> and the abuse of Twitter<\/a> along the way. You can find out more about his work on his website<\/a> or by following him on Twitter<\/a>. For his latest story, William has once again entered the world of\u00a0social media. Here he explains what inspired this return visit\u00a0\u2014 as ever, it pays to read\u00a0the story first<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Writing A life in the day of<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

A life in the day of<\/em>\u00a0mostly came from observing the behaviour of people on social media, frantically checking their accounts in search of instant gratification in the form of likes, shares and messages, and the tech support guys in the background who keep all the balls juggling in the air to allow the chatter to spread.<\/span><\/p>\n

My own background after leaving university was originally in IT, some years of it spent in tech support\u00a0\u2014 stuck in dingy offices in cubicles or basements while the exciting business all took place upstairs \u2014 frantically trying to maintain both the computer systems and a semblance of a private life outside the grey walls.<\/span><\/p>\n

We’ve all seen the parodies of IT people, the jokes about nerds and geeks, the stereotypes that get dragged out in TV and movies. Like all stereotypes, there are both lies and truths to be found on examining them. One of the truths is that ‘firefighting’ system problems in large businesses often takes place in blind panic, under great pressure from higher up in the business from people who don’t\u00a0\u00a0understand the technical issues involved and just want things sorted.<\/span><\/p>\n

Turning it off and on again isn\u2019t often an option.<\/span><\/p>\n

I wanted to write a wee story about how that pressure feels. But I needed something to hook it onto; geeks and nerds tend only to make interesting stories to other geeks and nerds.<\/span><\/p>\n

I had a \u2018what if \u2026\u2019 moment when I wondered what might happen if our first contact came, not through traditional radio channels or via an alien ship landing on the White House lawn, but from something curious as to what our current chatter across social media might be all about.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then I wondered how such a contact might affect the poor corporate drone in that dark grey basement.<\/span><\/p>\n

This, then is the story of a day in the life of a tech-support guy, the vagaries of IT networks, the weight of the daily grind, and how it blinds you to what is really right in front of your face.<\/span><\/p>\n

Not bad for under 1,000 words.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

William Meikle makes a welcome return to Futures this week, with his story A life in the day of. Regular readers will know\u00a0that in the past William has tackled a range of topics from problematic fungi to difficult data collection, taking in the dimming, education and the abuse of Twitter along the way. You can find out more about his work on his website or by following him on Twitter. For his latest story, William has once again entered the world of\u00a0social media. Here he explains what inspired this return visit\u00a0\u2014 as ever, it pays to read\u00a0the story first.  Read more<\/a> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/futureconditional\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/futureconditional\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/futureconditional\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/futureconditional\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/281"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/futureconditional\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/futureconditional\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2787\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/futureconditional\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/futureconditional\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/futureconditional\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}