Plugged Into a Brave New Home Workroom

In exploring our roughed-in remodeling project the other day I discovered a disturbing fact about myself.

The workmen were not on the scene, and I took their absence as a chance to get the feel of what was to be my new workroom.

The south wall is windowless. It is designed to accommodate my computer and accessory machines; most of it will be bookshelves.

Where my computer desk is to go there was what appeared to be an electric box for two plugs. It was desk-top high.

“Shouldn’t that box be at floor level,” I said to my wife, “so the cables can go down behind the desk and not lie on top of it like a nest of snakes?”

“Yes. Of course,” she said. “And you need at least six plugs.”

“I need six plugs?” I said, astounded.

“Of course.”

“Whatever for?” I asked.

She counted them off on her fingers. “For one, your computer. Your modem. Two printers. Your telephone answering machine. And your fax machine. That’s six. To begin with.”

It was true. I already had all those machines plugged in in my old workroom, which is to become a dining room. I had accumulated them one by one without realizing what was happening to me. My total work life had become computerized.

True, my computer is an IBM PC, the first personal computer made by IBM. It is grotesquely out of date, my sons tell me, but I make do with it. So, having joined the Computer Age at the beginning, I can hardly call myself a Luddite.

The Luddites were an early 19th-Century group of workers--a mob more than an organization--who tried to hold off the Industrial Revolution by wrecking machines. In the end, of course, the machines gave them more jobs than they had before--not that they made life any more agreeable.

In a sense, I have been a Luddite, though. I have resented the intrusion of the computer and its relatives into every aspect of our daily lives. One cannot put the genie back in the bottle, but sometimes I long for the time when we picked up our phone and said, “Hello, Central.”

Some writers claim that they still write in longhand, with a pencil; their only concession to technology is that they have someone type their manuscripts. The typewriter itself was a stupendous technological achievement. It took thousands of young women out of their homes and put them into offices. (In those early years they were called typewriters .) For that matter, the pencil itself was a revolutionary invention.

Some writers insist they write better in longhand. Some insist that the computer frees their inspiration, and their work is better. The columnist George F. Will insists that only when his ideas flow from his brain down through his arm and hand to his pen is he truly creative. He has said that prose written on a computer compares with real prose as processed cheese compares with real cheese. One is tempted to conclude that Will’s prose is real cheese.

When we had our house in Baja I used to take down a legal pad and a pocket full of pencils and write longhand. I sharpened them with a hand-cranked desktop sharpener. It was fun, for a change, but I can’t say I produced any real cheese.

But I had no idea I was already so completely dependant on machines. I feel like the man in that horror story who was cast ashore on a mysterious island with a lovely young woman. They saw some kind of human creatures on the island, but they were covered from head to toe with a fungus-like gray crud; they were shy and remained reclusive. The young couple lived in paradisiacal isolation; and then one day they noticed a little spot of gray on each other’s faces.

If I need six (plugs) in my new room it is obvious that I have already been hopelessly contaminated by technology. My wife says six won’t be enough.

“What more could I possibly add?” I asked.

She pointed out that I will probably want a television set, an electric clock, a desk lamp, a radio, for the news, and maybe a coffee warmer. “And don’t forget your electric pencil sharpener,” she added.

What would I need a pencil for? I have dozens of pencils now, standing about in coffee mugs--unsharpened. The ballpoint pen has almost completely replaced the pencil in my life. When I was a reporter I used soft-leaded copy pencils to take notes on folded sheafs of copy paper. I have an idea that reporters today use tape recorders. Somehow it doesn’t seem as romantic.

“You know,” my wife said the other day, “I’d like to have a car telephone.”

No. Never. We’ve got to stop somewhere.