I never intended to be so dependent on technology.  I got to be almost 40 without ever owning my own computer; when I did get one, I had no idea what the numbers were, or what a computer could do.  Other than word-processing, that is.   In fact, I'd had my first computer for a year before I found out its 40 meg hard drive was divided into two partitions, which is why I was always running out of space when I'd written far less than the Encyclopedia Britannica that they'd promised me would fit on my computer.

But that was then, and this is now. I have two computers -- a desktop and a laptop.  The former is a Pentium, a bee-you-tee-full black power machine, even if it is "only" a Pentium 200.  The laptop is even older -- a 486 -- but it has that gorgeous butterfly keyboard that's never been made again, and has never failed me (yet). 

Lest anyone think computers are only aesthetic objects in my life, let me clarify.  Without my computer I am dead; I've known that for some time.   I was reminded of it when I lost two hard drives in less than six months.  My life is on my Personal information manager, backed up on my equally old PalmPilot.   All the work I've created in the last ten years is on my computer, and only some of it has been stored on paper as well.  (And no-one has invented the electronic "find" function for paper files, to my knowledge, which would be a severe handicap for me in retrieving documents.) 

What I learned today is that I'm seriously impaired when I lose my electronic link to the world; almost as impaired as when I lose the computer itself.   The day began with a good connection to the 'Net, and a reliable flow of email.   Then the 'Net connection disappeared, but the email continued.  (This isn't unusual in our household, since our email comes from our webserver (via 9Net) and our 'Net connection is via Sympatico (also known as Bell Canada, and the monopolist of ADSL lines when we got ours.)  Then the email died, too.

Our houseguest (who listens to the radio faithfully -- CBC One, no less, when in Canada, so that she doesn't get lost in grief without NPR as her constant companion) noticed me cursing my "bad technology day".  Now, this friend refers to my computer as "that machine", and the 'Net as "that Internet".  Not what we'd call a techno-fan.  I expected a "Serves you right for relying on that machine".  What I got was: "Oh! Didn't you know? 'That Internet' is down.  There's a fire in Toronto.  Oh, and the phones don't work either, and ATMs are down."

Asking for more precise information was pushing my luck and I knew it.  I had no trouble with long-distance calls to and from Toronto, but my electronic lifeline was definitely dead -- dee eee dee, as we say.  Turns out, there was a fire, and it was a Bell Canada fire, but it was responsible for taking down more than its own Internet Service Provider.  Not only Sympatico users were bereft; heck, even the Toronto Stock Exchange shut down, since electronic transactions were down, and that was seen as being unfair to those traders not on the floor.  Amazing how far we've come, I thought.

What I realized, though, is that my work is seriously restrained without email, without access to the World Wide Web, heck, without even a conversational link to my friend Caren, with whom I share electronic coffee breaks almost daily.  Of course, I do have this reading to do.. for the comprehensives.. and I took advantage of this situation (translation: there being nothing else to do...) and did some of that reading. Sitting bolt upright.  In an uncomfortable chair. Taking notes.  And not falling asleep.  I was proud of that initiative.

But I want my connection back.  I can feel a temper tantrum coming on.  Isn't that fire out yet?  How many fire fighters does it take to put out a fire in one room? How many engineers does it take to restore the geographic and economic centre of Canada to normalcy?  When I know, I'll be sure to record it.   For now, I'm back to the quaint Luddite practice of reading. A book.  Paper.   Bound pages.  No search function.  Sigh.

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