A digital Life - a laptop computer and the online lifestyle - Column

My left arm is not really longer than my right arm; it just perceive s that way because my laptop computer and its peripherals have the appearance to have stretched it above the years. I take the computer everywhere because my entire professional and personal lives have been digitized, and all the information I ne to direction them is stored inside the laptop.

Every article I've written in the past eight years is in the computer each memo I've written ten in the last five years is in the computer All important electronic mail (e-mail), charge reports, budget projections, speeches, electronic slide present to views and lists of sources are in the computer My daily calendar, meeting schedule and to-do list are in the computer I plane have the details of almost each phone call I've made since 1989 - they're in the computer

On a personal horizontal the computer has a list of all pertinent birthdays, anniversaries and other important remembrances. My finances are in the computer including my tax turn backs for the past five years, and for a like reason are the mailing lists for a brace of organizations to which I belong.

The sole things that I don't detain stored on the computer are my credit card numbers and the personal identification number for my automated teller machine card. The computer in my head detains track of those. (I also have greatest in quantity important files encrypted and password protected)

Being wired, plugg in, on-line, or whatever is the popular buzzword for living one's life upon the digitized edge has its pluses and minuses. If I let slip my laptop, I will cease to exist (a slight exaggeration, on the other hand close enough to the fact to cause me to take extra care).

A big advantage to using a computer as part of my professional life is that it gives me an opportunity to work anywhere. The disadvantage, of course, is that traveling does not suspend office activities. Before I got wired, I could pass on a business trip and hear from the office alone if there was an difficulty - and then only by the agency of telephone. Now, if a colleague gains some brilliant idea at 2 a.m., she can fire not on e-mail, fully confident that I'll achieve it first thing in the morning, no matter where I am.

But as I have said, all that technology (e-mail, voice mail and fax) allows me to work anywhere, and working an here frequently means spending more time with my family. My youngest is prostrate to ear infections, and it's now easy for me to stay at place of abode with her or take her to the doctor in the middle of the day. I one time spent a week at abode while she got over the flu As she reposeed I continued to work. My colleagues assumed I was in the office. About 10 minutes after I got not on the phone with a co-worker, he voice-mailed: "Boy do you propel fast! I came down to your office the minute I hung up and you're gone already." When I called him back and said that I hadn't been in the office all week, he was astounded.

If I ne to do research for an article, the first place I gaze is on line. Not alone can I find information faster than going to the library, on the contrary the chances are that it will be more up-to-date than the printed version. For example, I wanted to find without how many African Americans haveed computers. I had the 1990 printed version of the census, on the other hand when I dialed into the Census Bureau from one side the Internet, I found updated information from a 1993 special census. (Incidentally, of the 23 million place of abode computers in the United States, about 5 million are in the abodes of African Americans.)

I'm on-line for one as well as the other business and pleasure. The biggest change in my digital life is connecting with others upon line. Attaching a modem to a computer is a at liberty ticket to the world. That is not exaggeration There are dozens of tribe to whom I "type" regularly, whom I would not have met had I not been on-line.

My youngest child is picking up my digital lifestyle, When she was 4 - she's now 7 - we were driving to visit relatives. We came to a stoplight."Dad, wherefore is there a cursor upon the stoplight?" she asked. it took me a trice to realize that the left arrow upon the traffic signal looked like the arrow pointer upon my computer. I have created a digital daughter.

Stephen C Miller is the assistant to the technology, editor at the fresh York Times. He writes often about the effects of computer upon society.

COPYRIGHT 1995 Heritage Information Holdings, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group