Pencil It In
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday February 2, 2008
There's something to be said for paperclips and green string, writes Jim Bright.
How much has our experience of being at the office changed over the past decade?I am prompted to raise this question as I write this week's column using two trusted and time-proven pieces of technology - a ballpoint pen and a pad of paper.My father retired in 1997, having successfully avoided any technological advances at work, apart from paperclips and the odd bits of green string which were once used to bind together hole-punched paper. Despite working in a white-collar profession for at least a decade after PCs were commonplace, he never once had to use any form of computer.Now I find myself working in the same fashion. Not out of choice, as with my father, but because my laptop has had a crash that makes last month's stockmarket plunge seem about as dire as losing a dollar down the back of the sofa. After 72 hours spent watching progress bars creep across the screen and hoping desperately my last 12 months of work can be retrieved from the wreckage, I realise there is a strange sense of pleasure, even security, in putting pen to paper. I can spill coffee on the pad, even drop it on the floor, but the words will remain.Contrast this with my ailing computer and its abortive attempts to reload "productivity software" - the spreadsheets, database systems and graphics programs on which we have all become so dependent. Once I have retrieved the fragments of my electronic existence, I have decided to track down and sue the person who first put the words "software" and "productivity" in the same phrase. Just think about how much of our lives are spent watching progress bars and hourglasses scanning for viruses, worms and robots. How much time do we devote to installing, upgrading, reconfiguring and then re-installing and re-reconfiguring? How much more time could we spend with our families appreciating art and nature if we weren't perpetually backing-up, copying to 5.25floppies, transferring to 3.5floppies, moving our stuff on to zip drives, external hard-drives and USB drives?And think of all the problems this technology poses.I am told by a librarian that preserving records written on paper and parchment is pretty straightforward. But the cost of trying to keep electronic information accessible for future generations is immense. How do you preserve for posterity a computer program written on a primitive Video Genie computer from the early 1980s? How do you know your chosen platform today won't be obsolete and forgotten tomorrow?Then there is the sheer cost to the consumer of buying all the technology on which we rely. I remember a time not so long ago when university professors were censured by their heads of department for insisting on laser- printing their documents when they had a perfectly serviceable dot- matrix printer. Now it seems almost every primary school student has a laptop, laser printer, personal digital assistant and USB drive. Indeed, Kevin Rudd has promised access to a computer for every child in years nine to 12. Of course, that is only the beginning, because once they have computer access, the kids will need ethernet and PC cards and wireless PC cards and external modems and ADSL modems and mobile phones that are modems. What, I ask, have our children done to deserve a life sentence of being out-of-date and exposed to viruses with exotic-sounding names like Barcelona, Japan and Berlin? When has a pencil ever got a virus? Have you ever tried sticking a USB drive up your nostril? What is wrong with having a phone that actually plugs into your house?It is nothing short of miraculous that I achieved anything over the past three days.Now, with my computer nearly up and running again, I'm thinking forward to a talk I am soon to give. I realise I can abandon my plans to use a couple of card prompts and a good memory to get through and instead subject my audience to Death By Powerpoint.Now that's progress!
© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald