Sync or Swim

 

Technology bytes. I mean, bites. It wants to be my friend and I’m happy holding it at arm’s length. Like many relationships with promising starts, my relationship with technology has evolved into one of frustrating co-dependence. Sometimes it’s great. Sometimes I feel like I’m being held hostage by Bill Gates.

 

Okay, Bill is not the whole problem. Actually, maybe he is. Three computers dominate my life: my government-issued computer at work, the “big” computer at home, which is hooked into the Internet, and my writing computer, which is hooked into my imagination and kept in isolation from errant viruses and other cyber-borne pathogens. A USB flash drive transports the entire body of my literary work, projects both completed and in progress, between PCs so when some predictably inevitable misfortune occurs, my writing will not be lost forever.

 

My office desktop was new in 2007 and runs Windows Vista (don’t ask). My home computer was new in 2008 and runs Windows 7. My writing computer was bought used a hundred years ago and runs Windows XP. I am by necessity proficient with three different versions of MS Word, though I still lament the demise of Word Perfect as the world’s best word processing software. WP aside, everything was running fairly smoothly until I started an online blog via the Google server. I say “fairly” because the keyboard on the “big” computer has an annoying tendency to ignore certain keystrokes – the question mark, for instance, shows up as É onscreen, quotation marks slant the wrong way, and the @ symbol sometimes refuses to show up at all, which makes it darned difficult to sign into my Google account even though the “big” computer is the only one from which I can post anything. My work computer speaks to the Internet, but it’s rather like speaking Québecois in Paris – the language sounds the same to the uninformed ear, but the Parisian has no idea what the French-Canadian is trying to say. In short, when I log into my email account from the office, I get an error message that my browser is too old to handle the current version of whatever Google is using to power Blogger, so I can forget about setting up a post during a break in my workday ... at least until my employer upgrades to Windows 7.

 

And with the wonky keyboard on the “big” computer, blog content must be written on my XP rig and transferred by flash drive to whichever vehicle will get me to the site with a minimum of cyber-shenanigans. Three computers. Three, when I once swore never to own one.

 

One night I caught a blurb supporting the restoration of classic films to blu-ray so we can all enjoy the oldies as they were meant to be enjoyed. Uh-huh. I said to Ter, “Can we wait for what comes after blu-ray so we only have to upgrade once more?” We finally had to shift our video library from VHS to DVD, yet have so far held out against the blu-ray phenomenon – though I watch with morbid fascination the industry’s push to plant an 80-inch 3-D Smart-TV in the teeny-tiny living room of every crackerbox condo occupied by a victim of technological Attention Deficit Disorder.

 

Despite the rant, I recognize the benefits of technology. Truly, I do. I am grateful for (most of) it every day. Managing the monster is the tricky part, and the monster lies within the operator rather than the machinery. I could succumb to the hype that accompanies every shiny new toy that hits the market. I could spend twenty-five hours a day glued to the monitor and completely ignore the carbon-based unit who shares my living space. I could be more interested in the view halfway around the world instead of the view outside my window … my “real” window, not my digitally-enhanced one. I don’t know that it would enrich my life the way real books and real people and face-to-face conversations do, however. It’s good for keeping in touch with loved ones abroad. It’s been good for my arthritis, given that I used to write my stories in longhand with a Bic ballpoint. It’s even been good for business, though when the network crashes, the whole office shuts down until further notice because no one remembers how we did business without computers. But is it good for us as people? My answer is to get this piece ready for posting, then I’m going to hug my best friend.

 

Oh, heck. I’m going to hug her first.