Shock and Awe When the IT Stops
Editor’s Note: Terry Calhoun transmitted this column, with his laptop
balanced on a garbage can, via a random wireless connection for reasons that
will become clear as you read further.
I just found out about shock and awe IT style first-hand. I have no idea why Mozilla Thunderbird
crashed on me this morning. First I could not send any messages, not through
my “umich” nor my “scup” identity. Then my inbox disappeared.
Then Thunderbird refused to boot up at all yet, when I reinstalled it, Windows
told me that I couldn’t install it – because it was already running.
Of course, I could not see or use it.
Then, our local area network went down and no one had email or Web, and I could
not download a new installation file. Following that, I rebooted my Vaio laptop
and it refused to boot up at all. Completely gone, among other things, was my
opinion column for this week. This happened while SCUP
was transmitting a special 2-hour Webcast to 150 college campuses which I had
managed for the past year. What a panic, at first, until we realized that only
our office had the problem. The show went fine for everyone else.
Sigh. Then, when our Webcast was over, I was faced with the choice of remembering
what I had written, or quickly writing about my reaction to and the experience
of . . . losing everything. As you can tell, I have chosen to write about losing
everything.
Actually, maybe what I just experienced was a “media disrupt,”
as I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, followed by collateral damage (loss
of data) from the interrupt.
I feel a certain sympathy with one early pioneer in wearable computing who,
more than four years ago, was trying to live as much of his life as possible
with the experience mediated through computing technology. He had spent quite
a long period of time, as I remember, living with headgear through which he
experienced the world around him via video camera instead of directly with his
eyes. (I would have his name and more details, except that I am writing this
without the Internet and am not quite sure how I am going to send it off to
my editor when I am done!)
Then, at some point in early October, 2001, security guards forced the removal
of his headpiece as he tried to board a regularly scheduled airline flight and
the descriptions of his shock and disorientation as he experienced a severe
“media interrupt” were horrifying.
The implications of what the respected college and university thinker and writer,
George Keller, once described at a SCUP conference as “living our lives
through screens” – desktop, laptop, television, cell phone, and
more, can seem disturbing. And I think we live our lives mediated through more
screens than George d'es. I include the windows in our buildings that do not
open. How real is the outside when, given current technology, you could be looking
into a video screen and not know the difference?
Let’s think about car windshields for a moment: One observation that
I frequently make is that most drivers, especially on highways, may have the
same sort of brain functioning going on when they drive as when they are watching
a television set. Maybe it comes from too much “living through screens”
or not. But what else can explain a line of 30 automobiles going 70+ miles per
hours, each less than 15 feet from the one in front?
If those drivers woke up to the real world and had the mental protection of
being safe because they’re viewing their surroundings through a screen,
I’ve got to think that they might freak out and experience what the “wearable
computing guy” did. But instead of falling down the airplane entryway,
they might crash. (Or slow down, pull over, start shaking, and never drive again?
Nah.)
The fact is that we all do live our lives through screens. (Maybe I’ll
give up dancing around the word and say “windows” from hereon in.)
I also recently wrote about the Digital Middletown study which found that its
subjects spent 70 percent of their waking hours interacting with media of some
sort. And where do we find that media? Through the windows opened up to what
is increasingly becoming our realer-than-real digital world.
Don’t for a moment think that I am arguing against screens and digital
technology. I love it. I was born for it and am glad I have not missed this
part of its evolution. But let’s tally up my day:
· Wake up and immediately start looking out the windows in my bedroom
to check out the weather and the great view;
· Walk to the bathroom, glancing out the windows of my front porch and
living room on the way;
· Do the personal grooming thing, looking out the bathroom window at the
sky and the evergreens to the east of my home;
· Eat breakfast sitting at the counter top and looking out my huge dining
room windows
· While doing, checking email and the Drudge Report on my Microsoft Windows;
· Then I drive or ride to work, watching my surroundings change through
car windows;
· Ride up to the third floor at work in the glass-walled elevator, watching
the world outside as I rise;
· Sit behind my desk, looking out a physical window that I cannot open;
· And spend my workday interacting with the world through my number one
laptop screen, my number two laptop screen, the large flat-screen monitor which
I can hook to either one, and my Treo 650’s tiny little screen;
· Ride home looking out windows;
· Then read several newspapers sitting at the same countertop where I
had breakfast, looking out at my private disc golf course and maintaining constant
Internet connection for email and Web at the same time;
· Repeat, in reverse order, the early morning routine.
Yep. I live my life through screens/windows. The best I feel all day is when
I have the daylight time to walk around my course and examine the plants, trim
some trees, pick some leaves and flowers.
Yet . . . I love this digital, windowed world. It has become a part of my life,
and the shock and awe that I would experience if it all went away would be devastating.
I would no longer have access to the stream of information and knowledge that
I think is helping me to become a wise, old man.
I hope you did not think I’ve rambled too much. The point I’d like
to get to, but don’t have the time for right now, is that those experiences
through digital windows, especially, are becoming so necessary to the new generation
that we’ve really got to take seriously:
(a) That it needs to be seen as a necessary utility or part of life and we
have to ensure that everyone has good access to it all; and
(b) At the same time, there are going to be intense collateral consequences
as the digitization of our experience continues.
Yet, how do people who don’t have the luxury, like me, of private, beautiful
acreage to walk on get the necessary(?) “real” input to their daily
lives that I get from walking on my course? Especially when they don’t
even want to!
I think the final straw, for me, is television on cell phones. You’ll
notice that I didn’t mention TV in my daily routine, above. That’s
because I don’t watch TV; can’t stand it.
So, when I lost my email and Web and my intended opinion piece today, the shock
I felt was partly from that and partly from the background shock my feeble mind
is suffering picturing being surrounded someday soon by dozens of other people,
in public, not only talking to the air, but watching television as they walk
along. That really puts me in a shaky mood.
Q: What happens, very soon, when we are in a hotel room and simply cannot determine
whether the view from the window is real or simulated? When the airplane window
beside us is touch screen and when our views through it are digital, enhanced
by all sorts of GIS data and related information? When a movie has human characters
who were never human and we can’t tell.
A: I don’t know. But I will soon.
P.S. (And this is true!) I’ve just found out that our wireless and wired
LAN is down and I can’t send any email at all. So I am now going to close
the file, walk to Starbucks, and send this to my CT editor from there. Ciao.
