Life Without A Computer

By Keith Boykin
Thursday, July 10 2003, 11:15AM

For the past few days, I've been without a computer. I'm installing a new computer and new software, but in the meantime, I'm wondering how I ever got along before computers.

I remember my first computer. Actually, it wasn't mine, but it was the first I used. It was a Radio Shack Tandy computer supplied by Hazelwood West High School in Florissant, Missouri. In 9th grade in 1979, it was all the rage.

At the end of 1979, the eighties were only a distant though of a mysterious future like TomorrowLand at DisneyWorld. Chevrolet advertised its "hot" new Citation as "the first Chevy of the eighties, the first Chevy of its kind...this could be the car you had in mind." George Orwell's classic book 1984 still struck fear in the minds of readers. And long before Prince was ready to party like it was 1999, he started his career by simply telling us, "I wanna be your lover."

Mrs. Brown, My 9th grade computer science teacher, told me that I needed to learn typing and computer skills if I wanted to survive in the new economy. It was the best advice anyone in high school ever offered. I learned to type 60 words a minute in high school. At a time when young men were still discouraged from typing, I eventually realized that typing would liberate me from the misery of handwriting.

I bought my first computer in 1984. It was a cute little computer called an Apple Macintosh. In a dramatic testament to the future, Dartmouth College required all students to own one of these glorified word processors. By the time I graduated from college a few years later, it was already obsolete. Still, I hung onto the computer for years before I finally threw it in the trash one day when I was moving.

In college, I picked up another computing skill that would last a lifetime. That's when I learned to compose as I typed. While our professors advised us to outline our thoughts on index cards before we typed, I felt this extra step would slow me down. As a procrastinator who waited until the last minute to write his term papers, I seldom had extra time to spare when writing. I started thinking as I wrote on the computer. Suddenly, I could communicate my ideas on paper more quickly than ever before.

Those compositional skills were honed as a junior journalist in college. I wrote dozens of articles on the computer and on deadline for the daily college newspaper, The Dartmouth. By the time I left college, I was virtually a computer whiz.

Then I learned the perils of computer knowledge. The more you know, the more people want you to do for them.

In my first job out of college, I worked as a press aide in the Dukakis for President campaign. I knew so much about computers that my colleagues appointed me the de facto computer guru. Seemed to be a good assignment until I assumed the responsibility involved. I was called over by my co-workers for lots of little computer issues in the press office. Of course, they could have fixed many of the problems themselves. ("You forgot to turn the printer on, boo.") Months later, I took over the responsibility of writing the campaign's daily entries for a new campaign newsletter called The Hotline that was transmitted by a strange, noisy device called a modem. I had no idea that electronic communication would become so important in the future.

By the time I reached law school in 1989, everyone used computers in school. Everyone that is except for the old professors. One day as I walked through the law library, I noticed a bow-tied professor lording over a huge stack of yellow legal paper filled with blue ink. It was Archibald Cox, famous for his role as a prosecutor in the Watergate scandal, and he was apparently writing out a new book, by hand.

I gave up my Macintosh and started learning Windows in law school. By the end of my last year, I was working in the computer lab and giving advice to other students about Windows, although I had never been trained to use it myself. In my first law firm job, I was forced to dictate memos for my secretary to type. I quit calling on her when I realized the time spent in dictating, typing, revising and retyping my memos could all be shortened by simply typing them myself.

I was shocked to discover just how antiquated the computer system was in the White House when I first set foot in the building on inauguration day in January 1993. No wonder Bush lost. He hadn't kept up with the changing times. The Clinton campaign, on the other hand, was already using email to exchange ideas back in 1992.

In mid 1993, our White House media office computer expert, Jock Gill, made a prediction. Jock was a bearded white man with glasses and a few years older than the rest of the staff in the press office. He told me that the Internet is the wave of the future. "The Internet. What's the Internet?" I asked. "Eventually, everything will be done on the Internet," he said with a wide-eyed smile. "Sure, whatever," I said to myself. Little did I know how right he was.

I discovered the Internet after I left the White House. Using the world wide web as a resource, I wrote my first two books on a tiny desk on an Apple laptop computer and then finally bought my first desktop PC, and a new desk, in 1999.

They say computers last about four years. I don't know how they know when to die, but mine started to die almost exactly four years after I got it. A few months ago, I noticed the computer was crashing more than usual. Then as I traveled around on the lecture circuit and used computers at various colleges I visited, I realized my computer was depressingly slow. As with human aging, you don't really notice the day-to-day wear and tear until one day you look up and nothing is working like it used to. That's what happened with my computer.

By May of this year, Microsoft Outlook had stopped working on my computer and I could no longer retrieve phone numbers from my address book. By June, the computer was crashing every day. At the end of the month, I finally broke down and bought a Dell, which I found online.

Now, with the new computer in my office, I'm ready to enter the 21st century. This week both of my computers have been out of commission as I make the transition from one system to another. I'm not very patient, but once my new system is up and running, I'm gonna sit down and say a little prayer to thank Mrs. Brown.

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