I used to brag that I intended to be the technology equivalent of Herb in those old Burger King commercials: The last person on earth not carrying a cell phone.

Then about two years ago, circumstances forced my hand. When on the road, if I needed to call people, I had to use pay phones, and they were getting scarce. Sometimes I had to use a decrepit one in a gas station/convenience store parking lot, amid traffic noise and sometimes in rotten weather.

I broke down and signed up for a smart phone, just like the one my post-college daughter had recently acquired. In her reply to my first text message she said: “Dad — hope you like it here in the future.”

How things change

Well, actually, I did, and I do. And “here in the future” means many things. In particular,it means a magazine like MSW is not at all the same thing it once was. Sure, you get a bound paper copy that comes in the mail. But you can also read that same magazine — pictures, page layouts and all — at the website, www.mswmag.com.

And the magazine is now part of the vast and growing world of social networking. I once (not too long ago) told a friend, “If I ever tweet, I hope someone shoots me.” Now I can tweet (and heaven help me have done so) from the MSW Twitter account.

MSW also has a Facebook page where you can sign up to be a fan. The Web page has a link to an editor’s weblog (those things actually go by the awful name of “blog”) where now and then I post a bit of industry news or an observation or idea. Under the Interact tab, the website also has a Contact form where you can share a comment or ask a question by way of email.

Momentum building?

So far these networking tools aren’t getting a great deal of use, but that’s likely to change as more of us adapt to the new communication channels and — let’s face it — as the industry’s workforce gets progressively younger with retirements of Baby Boomers.

A magazine today is much more a living, breathing organism than it was half a dozen or even two or three years ago. Through these new communication channels, you have opportunities to embrace it, to shape it, to be part of a better-connected community of readers.

So here’s a challenge to you. Perhaps if you’re in my age group (and I came of age around the time of the first Clean Water Act), you resist the new ways of communicating and some of the new communication devices. I hereby encourage you to try them out.

Think about it. A few years ago, if a magazine article interested you, and you wrote a letter to the editor in response, you would wait a couple of months to see it in print. Now, if you send that letter by email or through our Contact function, there’s a chance you could see it on my editor’s blog the next day.

If you sign up to “follow” MSW on Twitter, you can get clued in to what’s coming in the next issue of the magazine or to something just posted on the blog. There’s also a Discussion Forum on the website (again under the Interact tab) that we wish more operators would use (though we realize there are other online forums).

Getting the knack

The beauty of all these communication technologies is that they are incredibly easy to use. When I brought home my smart phone after getting a quick demo in the store, I thought I was doomed to spend a day or two poring over the manual and pecking at the keyboard. Not so. I picked up the basics in a few minutes, barely even looking at the manual. So it is with tools like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube — only more so.

You don’t even need to read a “For Dummies” book. Just go out there and get to work. Maybe ask a tech-savvy friend a few basic questions and you’ll know what you need to get a good start.

In most of these instances I’ll be feeling my way along the same as you are, getting used to the idea of what it means now to edit a magazine, as you get used to what it means to read one. In the end I believe we’ll all like it fine “here in the future.” Even if at first we don’t, we must accept that these new ways are here to stay, and we have to embrace them if we want to stay in the loop.

As Bob Dylan put it somewhat ominously, “You’d better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone ...” F

Comments on this column or about any article in this publication may be directed to editor Ted J. Rulseh, 877/953-3301; editor@mswmag.com.