CKNW Editorial
for October 14, 1999

As I look back four, perhaps five years I’m astonished at what I see. I have used a computer for word processing for about 15 years. But that was all I used it for. It was a convenient typewriter because I could edit so easily and I could save what I did to a black piece of plastic called a floppy disc. Instead of having to save written documents in file folders all I wrote was on a disc which stored huge amounts of information.

In those days I got a lot of mail at the studio and the vast majority of it was written or typed in the old fashioned way and sent by mail. The old fashioned way being an IBM Selectrix typewriter – I have one in mint new condition at home and I couldn’t give it away now. I’m saving it for its antique value!

By the early nineties the mail began to come more and more by fax – perhaps it was 50-50. For me it made no difference – to answer my mail as best I could I still keyed it into my computer, printed the result and sent it by fax or ordinary mail as appropriate. I suppose I receive about 20 pieces of mail a day and answering it was laborious.

In the last year the load of mail has increased to perhaps 30 pieces a day and I would guess that more than 75% is by email. This has been good news and bad news I suppose. It’s good news in the sense that I can simply key a message on the one I’ve received and hit the send button and it’s answered. The bad news is that I get a lot more individual mailings and the bulk has increased astronomically. This is because of the ability to attach huge amounts of written material onto the email. When I wrote my last book I regularly sent attachments of about 140,000 words to Toronto to my publishers and it took about 5 seconds to send. I made the mistake the other day of ordering my computer to print out an attachment which looked interesting without looking to find out how many pages is was. It turned out to be 25 so unwittingly I tied up one of the printers in the office for about half an hour! It was a good thing the attachment wasn’t the Bible or the Encyclopedia Brittanica!

The Internet has so changed my life that I have to shake my head when I think of doing research only three or four years ago. Legal decisions are there within minutes of being handed down. Matters that you would pore through encyclopedias to find now are at your fingertips.

In fact, now there is a problem of too much information. As you work your way through indexes provided by search engines you have a hard time sifting through the unnecessary stuff. Because the search engine people want to give you every possible place the thing you are mentioning is found you find yourself scrolling through miles of crap that are useless to you.

Moreover, some information you would think easy to find is maddeningly unfindable. For example, try finding out how much the cost of living index was as of August 31 last. You will, I can assure you, thrash through dozens of blind leads in the Stats Canada website and if you can find that pretty basic bit of information you’re a better man that I am Gunga Din.

But the point of this blurb isn’t so much the advantages of being online as to remind myself how much has changed. What is really scary is that we haven’t even scratched the surface of what is yet to come.

Older readers will remember Dick Tracy and his two way wrist radio which the writer, Chester Gould, thought of in the 40s. Of course that’s come to pass with cell phones scarcely bigger than a wrist watch. But now, inside a year or two we’re told, we’ll be online with a hand held multiple purpose gizmo. We’ll be surfing the net as we bus it to work and back.

I have survived the changes of the past decade and in many ways wonder how I made do in olden times. But I have to wonder how much more the human body can absorb – and do we want to absorb more?

I suppose the answer is yes because each new development is gobbled up by the consumer.

But every once in awhile it’s fun to pass by my delightful colleague Philip Till’s office. Philip refuses to have anything to do with this new fangled stuff and somehow the clickety-clack of Philip’s old ribbon typewriter sounds like an old melody you once danced cheek-to-cheek to.

It’s a nice memory but like so many nice memories you probably wouldn’t want to go back there even if you could.