December 1999

Hi, I’m Sherrie, and I’m a Techaholic...

by Sherrie Bennett, Editor

Being somewhat skeptical of Y2K and similar predicted technological disasters, I scoffed at the notion that the arrival of September 9, 1999 (9-9-99) could possibly mean anything except another routine day of techy success. Imagine my surprise that evening when I turned on my computer after a day spent in meetings to find that my hard drive had inexplicably crashed and burned in my absence.

Initially, I was in denial. Like a Pavlovian animal conditioned to obtain food by manipulating levers, I repeatedly attempted to restart my computer, convinced that the world would right itself at any second, and I would be able to retrieve my e-mail. My initial disbelief then turned to anger: how dare my computer fail me at a time when I had pressing deadlines and no time in my schedule for technological snafus? Resisting the urge to dropkick my beloved machine, and by now sweating profusely, I searched frantically for the 1-800 hotline number for the computer-impaired which had come with the computer when I purchased it several months ago. The voice on the other end of the line gave me the bad news with all the tact of a doctor whose surgery could not save the patient: "I’m feeling your pain, ma’am, but I’d say she’s a goner." There was nothing left to do but box "her" up for the sad trip back to ComputerPartsRUs to discuss the intricacies of warranty language.

The first full day without my computer I put up a brave front. After all, I reasoned, the human race had evolved over hundreds of thousands of years without even electricity, much less e-mail. Surely I could survive a couple of weeks computerless in Seattle. I searched my memory for clues as to how I had communicated with other people before e-mail. Oh, yeah, I could telephone or go see someone face-to-face. Shuddering at the inefficiency of it all, I tried to remember what I had done with my phone books, then realized I had been using them to rest my feet on as I keyboarded away.

Bravery turned into post-traumatic stress as the days ahead revealed the gaping holes blown in my everyday existence. Potential Bar News articles were suspended in cyber limbo, agonizingly unattainable. I was forced to needlessly kill trees by sending things via snailmail. My child’s soccer coach thought I was a big slacker for not having downloaded the soccer schedule. I even had to balance my checkbook the old-fashioned way, by phone. I could go on and on, but the gruesome details would just make you cry.

Somewhere along the way, though, a surprising phenomenon took hold. After the first few days of e-mail withdrawal, I found myself not missing it that much. Not being chained to my computer left me with time to enjoy other interests, which had fallen aside since I’d taken up "net" surfing. Picking up the phone to communicate with someone, although undeniably slower, brings the reward of spontaneity and tonal texture, and a personal touch sometimes lacking out in cyberspace. Sitting down to read a newspaper cover to cover is a far more relaxing experience than scanning the headlines on your favorite news website (you know the one I’m talking about).

Now that my hard drive is up and running again and I am back in the e-mail business, I am trying to remind myself not to get mindlessly reattached to a technology which has the potential for using me, rather than me using it. I’m making a conscious effort to distinguish between accessing information merely because I can, and accessing information because I have a need for it at that particular moment.

Could you be a techaholic? Here are some symptoms:

You try to enter your password on the microwave.
You haven’t played solitaire with real cards in years.
You e-mail the guy in the office right next to yours.
You chat several times a day with a stranger from South Africa, but you haven’t spoken to your next-door neighbor yet this year.
Your reason for not staying in touch with friends is that they do not have e-mail addresses.
You consider the U.S. mail painfully slow.
You "hear" most of your jokes via e-mail instead of in person.

If you recognize yourself, it may be time to join me in acknowledging that you’ve got a problem, and try to cut back, one day at a time.

The whole experience brought to mind the discussion around the WSBA offices the past couple of years regarding the eventual demise of Bar News in its current monthly paper magazine format. The techies amongst us have predicted that new technology now being perfected will ultimately allow the WSBA to "push" the contents of Bar News to you via e-mail, making it unnecessary to kill trees and incur the expense of postage. I find, though, that I don’t read newsletters I receive via e-mail as thoroughly as material sent via snailmail, as I tire of reading at my computer for long periods of time, and it seems wasteful to download massive amounts of information. There is also the advantage of the portability of a paper magazine. I have watched people read Bar News while waiting in court, on buses and even sitting in rush-hour traffic. Additionally, a tangible magazine shipped to you each month just keeps hanging around your office until you do something with it (read it, store it, stack it on your coffee table, trash it, or whatever else it is you do with your Bar News).

I’m guessing it will be some time before an electronic version would be preferred over the paper magazine version sent via mail. I’d love to hear what you think on the topic... you can e-mail me, of course!

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