This morning I'm at the house of my brother and his wife, in Colorado Springs, having just flown in last night from Portland. I'm in town for the semiannual national meeting of the National Coordinating Committee for War Tax Resistance, which starts tommorrow. It was easy to decide to come to this meeting, since my brother lives right here (the meetings are in different cities every time).
This post is about other easiness. The ease of mobile networked computing, I guess. This is totally nothing new, and if you think I'm writing this as some earth-shattering news, you're wrong. This is just a personal observation of the first time this phenomenon has really happened to me.
What phenomenon am I speaking of? I guess i'm talking about the long-promised, much-hyped "work anywhere", locationless world we have supposedly started living in over the last few years, thanx to the Internet, laptops, etc. We've heard about this for so long, and I guess I'm suprised that, being the supergeek that I am, that I haven't really felt this before. But here it is: today, a couple hours ago, I woke up in this strange bed in a strange house (well, not totally strange, I've visited here before a few times, but still). I fired up my laptop, plugged it into an ethernet jack in the wall (yes, allan and jeannette are supergeeks too), and just... started doing what I usually do in the morning, which is: get my email, post to my blogs, read the news, read urls people sent to me, answer questions about various projects I'm involved with that people have emailed me about, etc etc. And I'm even drinking cup after cup of green tea, which is my usual morning ritual, too.
...And I suddenly got this weird realization of what was happening. I've got my laptop, internet connection, green tea (which i left here last time I visited, i think!), a reasonably comfortable chair -- that's all I need. I could be anywhere, doing the "work" that I do. Almost all of it, other than the video and sound stuff (which I could probably do portably too, most of it, if I had a little bit faster powerbook).
And yeah this is the first time I've really felt that good about it, I mean that things just work the way they're supposed to, bookmarks and cookies and passphrases and network protocols and batteries and browsers and RJ-45 jacks. It's pretty nice. I am not an early adopter. I get excited about new technologies but I am also fervently anticonsumerist. I am not going to go out and blow cash on something just cuz it's a snazzy new piece of gear. I wait till they work the kinks out, and till it becomes clear that the gizmo will really make my life better. These are things John Perry Barlow and Bruce Sterling were crowing about in Wired magazine half a decade ago, but it was mostly vaporware, really. I mean when you got down to it, until recently, only if you spent a shitload of money and time and happened to be at a high-tech office or school did this shit really create a net positive effect on your life and work. It was all just "gee whiz", it's the future!
A lot of this is real subjective and other factors help out. The sun is shining, it's warm and comfortable in this house, and I am in a good mood. These things help me to have a good attitude about this hunk of plastic and silicon i'm starting at. But the fact remains that other than the type of cereal I ate, I got up and pretty much did the same things and accomplished the same little tasklets that I would have done had I still been back home, even though I'm, what? about 1300 miles away?
But, speaking of sun, it's time to get dressed and get a breath of fresh Colorado air.
Posted by steev at Mayo 6, 2004 10:43 AM