My new best friend
Welcome back. Been awhile.
I've been known to dabble in technology. Some might even say I'm an early adopter - the kind of must-have consumer that keeps hi-tech companies in business, and salivating.
I bought my first computer in 1988. It was a clone of an 8088 - two generations before the IBM 386. Not quite the Commodore 64, but an incredible facsimile. My first modem - which I bought a couple of years later, in order to log onto electronic bulletin boards (a text-only, and highly propeller-head driven forerunner of what is today the Internet) - operated at a blinding 2,400 baud. It was, believe it or not, state of the art at the time.
I come by my penchant for all things shiny and new honestly. My father - although he probably doesn't know it - is the same way. Ours was one of the first houses in our neighbourhood - quite possibly in the country - to have cable. It would have been around 1970. There were 13 channels. The only difference was, you didn't have to get up to change to one of them. You had a "remote" - a large, plastic fake woodgrain brown box with raised, punch-key type buttons. It was tethered to the television by about an 8-foot length of plastic cord.
Flash forward 25 years and change: I am a homeowner in my own right. And yes, we have megacable. The full suite of digital stations (no HDTV yet, although I'm in the process of wearing my wife down on the issue). We have a superb, high-end PC with all the bells and whistles - and two hard drives. Two DVD players. A drawer full of old, unused MP3 players and cell phones.
I now have an ancient and obsolete PDA - six or seven years old, with 10 times the memory of my original computer.
Such a techoslut am I that sometimes my belt looks more like it belongs on an engineer than a recovering journalist/crypto-bureaucrat. As loyal readers will know, I mourned the death of my first iPod, only to have it replaced (bless the women in my life) with a snazzier, newer model - that also plays video.
A confession, then: I have succumbed to the charms of the Crackberry.
After a couple of years of infrequent badgering, I finally persuaded my manager - an admitted techo-eschewer - to get me one of these new-fangled communicator-type devices. Double bonus: I'm wired, and the company pays for it.
One thing I've noticed already: it completely changes your relationship to work, and to your co-workers - the expectation of your availability. You're never really away. Even if you're off, for the weekend or the month, you're connected - just like that ancient tv remote. It's the tie that binds.
My wife has had one for a couple of years, and was helpful in showing me some tips and shortcuts. And typically, of course, the manual that came with it was infinitely less useful than the hundreds, quite possibly thousands, of web sites, chat rooms and message boards that abound on the iWay.
However, novelty has quickly given way to seduction, and in turn, to obsession. It's like one of those bad Michael Douglas movies from the 1990s. I fully expect to come down one morning and find it boiling my pet rabbit for breakfast.
In fact, that's very much part of the problem. I leave it on a windowsill at the bottom of the stairs. The ever-present blinking light - green if there are no new messages; red if there are - is the last thing I see before retiring, and the first thing that greets me in the new dawn.
Ironic, those colour choices. Because - in traffic parlance - green means go. It means, nothing here for you. No worries. You're safe. Proceed as you were.
But red? Stops you cold. You may move no further. You must obey, or pay the consequences.
So when the red light is blinking, I stop, look and read. And reply. Incessantly. Obsessively. Any time of the day or night. After my wife and kids have gone to bed, I grab for my Crackberry and set it down beside me on the couch. Not to get caught up on the day's unfinished business, but to wait eagerly for new signs of contact - sacred communication! - from the outside world.
It is with this same sense of urgency that I wait, in fact, for the traffic lights on my drive to and from work to change to red so I can read the latest dispatch. Because only a moron - or a Palm Pilot user - would attempt to use e-mail while driving. (A side note: This crime is not one that the Harper Conservatives have identified and attempted to rectify - yet.)
My friend is beside me. Always. On my hip, on my desk or somewhere within easy reach. It's not like I can't breathe without it. It's just easier.
But I can stop. Any time I want. I'm totally not addicted. It's not like I need to read my messages the instant they arrive. I choose to do so. I control the technology. It does not control me.
If there's a 12-step program for Crackberry addicts? I'll be the first to join.
