Brief movie review: Trick (1999)

A film set in the Village of NYC, Trick shows us how two people can be attracted to each other, spend the night trying to find a place and privacy to act on the attraction, and end up forming more than a physical relationship.

Yes, the two people are men.  Yes, there are other gay men in the film.  Yes, the theatre was filled with men, most in couples.   So, in that sense, it was a gay film.

But mostly it was a sweet tale of young people and their relationships.  And not only that, but it also provides the NYC fix that many of us smaller-town folk need every now and then.

I don't really believe in astrology, or lunar phases as explanations for human events. But I bet this is what a lunar shift causing widespread distress would be like.  On top of yesterday's events, today brought more.  In particular, it brough the death of our Internet connection.

It's clear that Internet access isn't among essential services for anyone, but it comes pretty darned close in my working life, and in my personal life.   As president of a company that develops, designs and maintains web sites, I usually enjoy a permanent high-speed connection to the Net.  No dial-ups.  No slow modems.  No annoying  down-times, other than the occasional slip by our Internet Service Provider. 

In this case, we knew the change was coming.  A regulatory ruling resulted in changes being necessary.  We had new software.  The resident technowizard has spent more than a dozen hours trying to get it to work on a Unix server.   Then, after it went down today, he spent hours trying to get it to work on a brand-new Windows system.  Still no results.  I often wonder what "normal" people do, and now I wonder even more.  The connection will be re-established. At some point.

What I found most curious today is how hopelessly intertwined my computer and the Net are in my way of working.  I see them as synonymous.  This mean that I spent much of the day trying to determine whether what I wanted to do next required the Net connection, or just my computer.   Most things, it turned out, required only my computer.  This made my life easier. 

But it also became clear that I turn to the Net dozens of times in a day.  I communicate with colleagues and clients by email and through Internet-based extranets and intranets. I look up phone numbers on the Net.  I look up times for movie showings on the Internet.  I chat with my friend Caren and my colleague Marc on ICQ, a Net-based way of chatting in real-time.  We were to post a product for a client today, on our own extranet.  None of those things happened.   For that matter, I can't actually post this entry without the Internet connection either, although I can write it.

The Net has become pretty darned close to essential to the way I work.  And the way I communicate with friends, colleagues, clients.  Not having a Net connection is almost as debilitating as not having a phone line.  (Being without either would make the day pretty much a write-off, other than for reading.) 

Is this a "bad thing"?  To be so reliant on technology?  I was struck, way back when I worked on a dedicated word processor in the mayor's office, that the then-new technology wasn't making our work any easier, although it was making our product better.  When the mayor decided not to seek re-election, we could easily send out personalized letters to all the campaign workers, rather than a "form" letter.  Every page of letterhead had to be sheet-fed, of course, into a printer.  And every letter had to be individually signed, and often personalized.  We had to work harder, but the workers got a better product.

Now, it's gone further.  There are many things that I do as a self-employed person that would not have been possible in a lower technology world.   Without email, without intranets, my communications would be considerably more costly in terms of both time and money.  So much so, that I could not be doing what I do now.  Period.  So, good or not, it's my reality.  I rely on this technology to do my work as fundamentally as North Americans rely on electricity or some other energy-source provided and delivered by others to  light their homes and provide heating and cooling.

While these one-day jolts of "reality", in which human-made solutions to problems fail and create their own problems, I'm tempted to succumb to nostalgia, and aspire to simpler, low-tech ways of working, and a livelihood that relies on those things we can provide ourselves, no matter what happens in the rest of the world.  But I know better.  Hence, I work without a Net when forced to, but not by choice.  Not even when I'm frustrated by its failure.  I want my Net back!

Next entry

Archived entries