Laptop's down, but life goes on via Internet

Laptop's down, but life goes on via Internet
by rudyharambee [dot] org (Rodolpho Carrasco)
Saturday, April 3, 1999 in San Gabriel Valley Newspaper Group
(Rodolpho Carrasco is associate director of Harambee Christian Family Center in Pasadena, Calif. and a columnist for the San Gabriel Valley Newspaper Group. Check out more articles by Rodolpho Carrasco here.)

As the plane accelerated the runway and then lifted up into the night sky, I planned what I would do on my Powerbook laptop computer during the four-hour red-eye flight to Chicago. E-mail, web pages, and an article nearing deadline were all on my list.

As soon as the flight attendant announced that we were free to pull out portable devices, I reached under my seat and grabbed my Powerbook. Its charcoal gray underside was hot.

I'm able to solve most of my computer problems, but I had never gone through a cycle of lock-ups, hanging boots, force quits and force re-boots like the one that entrapped me as the plane continued to ascend.

My powerbook was dead. I had reason to panic.

My one reason for flying to Chicago was to teach an employee of a national association of nonprofits how to maintain her organization's web site. Everything I do in relation to web sites is on my Powerbook.

But because of the nature of Internet technology today, the web site training turned out fine.

The actual work we were doing -- creating web-ready pages and graphics -- can be done on any type of computer, as HTML, GIF, and JPG are formats created to function on any operating system. Since my trainee was using a Compaq computer system, she needed the Windows 98 version of my web site maintenance training anyway, not the Macintosh version.

I had a more personal reson to panic, given that my work relies more on e-mail from my Powerbook than phone or fax communication. But even in that area, the Internet came through.

As I have done in South Africa, Mexico City, Times Square in the heart of New York City, and the American Airlines terminal at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, I connected to my e-mail from a computer that was not my own.

During a break between web training sessions, I booted Outlook Express, typed in the name of my e-mail server along with my user name and password, and hit the "send and receive" button. In this way my work flow continued, with few of the 30 people I e-mailed from Chicago aware of my plight.

Today, regular people like myself are able to accomplish work that a few years ago was the domain of the Internet technology professional. Even though I build web sites and stay perpetually connected via e-mail, I've never taken an Internet class. What I learn as I go, along with the strategic investments in a powerful copmuter and sophisticated software makes my work possible.

What amazes me at this moment, however, is how my work flow continues even while my Powerbook remains on the blink. Last I saw, the good people at Di-No Computers in Pasadena were giving my Powerbook mouth-to-mouth and wheeling it into the E.R. I should be sidelined in the waiting room until news of the operation emerges.

But here I am, chugging away. I wrote part of this article on a borrowed computer at my office that has a net connection. I also wrote from home, where there is an older computer that is also connected to the net.

Even if I had no other computers at work or at home, I could go to a friend's home, visit another agency, go to Kinko's or a cybercafe -- even rent a computer. Of course, it is uncomfortable to use these computers, which are shared amongst many people. But today I'm not hindered in getting my task accomplished.

The opportunities I have to keep my work flow going encourage me when I think about the multitudes of people who are entering the job market in this information age.

The possibility of doing the same piece of work from different computers in different locations, as I did in producing this article, means the bar of entry into this job market is lowered for adults getting off of welfare and low-income youths, two groups of people I interact with regularly.

I think of the news report that a bank in Cincinnati completed its Y2K transition last month by farming out work to programmers in India. By relying on Internet file transfers and e-mail, this bank kept 24-hour attention on the problem until it was solved.

Man, I wish we could divert jobs like that into the inner city! Few people I know are not trained to re-program millions of lines of computer code. But we are on our way. The first thing we did after Earthlink Network built an Internet computer lab on the premises of Harambee Center, the youth-serving nonprofit I co-direct here in Northwest Pasadena, was require every staff person and teen to get an e-mail account.

Though e-mail is not necessary to our work, which is to tutor children and provide them a safe after-school environment, we are making it necessary in order to get everybody in our sphere of influence immersed in information processing and Internet technology.

I believe this is the sort of action we all must take, and due to advancements in computer and Internet technology, as well as to the increasing prevalence of computers throughout our society, it is within our grasp.

The copyright for these materials are owned by Rudy Carrasco.  These materials were use with permission by TechMission