Our Electronic Lives

My life is on my computer. Until today, I knew that in the back of my mind, but thankfully I never really had to face the reality of living without the essential laptop as my equipment had been fortunate enough to survive the heat of the Arizona desert, the cold ruggedness of the Rocky Mountains, the hazy and fog of the LA Basin, the humidity of the South Florida Coast, the brutality of a Wisconsin winter, and the damp rainy skies of the Pacific Northwest.

Wherever I went, the MacBook Pro was right by my side, serving as my eyes and my ears,fueling my reputation for instant information, fueling my desire for constant stimulation, and perhaps most importantly, allowing me to get by without being crippled by a natural deficiency in the fine motor skills department.

Sure, it gave me my fair share of scares, but I never thought I would lose it. Despite all of the occassional frozen screens, the lost power, the slow internet connections, and the occassional slip out of the car or bus, I had never considered the possibility that one day I should wake up and find myself without my right-hand man.

Today started out like any other. I woke up after a surprisingly deep sleep, headed downstairs to check email, facebook, twitter, the weather, and espn before heading back up for a shower. Did that, had breakfast, watched a bit of the Morning Drive and a dash of Dan Patrick, and went on my way.

Instead of compulsively checking my email again before my Philosophy class, I decided to use my ipod to get caught up when I got to the classroom. Day still decidely normal.

Head to RMI 300, turn on the laptop, unconsciously go to open up the powerpoint document and get caught in a freeze. Maybe I will have to skip the Big East Tourney opener on ESPN3, but I've gotten in and out of freezes plenty and there was no reason to worry.

Shut er' down and reboot. No problem.

But why is the apple logo and the spinning disc taking so long?

Ok, I will try it again...no dice...again, third time's the charm?...this isnt looking good.

Now I am worried, the kind of worry I assume is akin to being in a park with your 3-year old daughter and losing her in a crowd of screaming kids, still confident she's around but worried due to the mere fact you've lost sight of her.

I'll just take notes on my handout and figure this out after class.

But this is a power lecture, I have to occupy myself. So 20 minutes in, I use the ipod to check the support page. Try a safe reboot, nothing...another, nothing...5 more, nothing.

Now she's been stabbed and comes back to me in someone's arms bleeding and unconscious and I am beyond the worry stage.

After class, I head to the computer lab and after a few tries and troubleshooting techniques, I see signs of life. I get her to get to the homepage, even got to yahoo's homepage, trying to recover my philosophy paper and email it out.

But just as soon as I thought all was right with my world, she went back into the coma, freezing the minute I went to click the send button.

Two more near-misses and it was time for lunch. Still, I went to lunch very optimistic she'd recover because I thought perhaps the rest would finally get her over the edge enough for me to send out the paper and then get her to the hospital at West Towne (also known as the Apple Store).

False optimism. I did get her to the sign-in page once more, but that rendezvous right before lunch was the last time my dear MacBook would ever see the realm of the internet. I tried for two hours to revive her before decided to head to the tech office to confirm the bad news I had already accepted as reality.

Hard Drive. Damaged.

The IT guy might as well have told me that I had lost a child. Thankfully the philosophy paper was the only thing in progress, but with those 3 words, any hope that I would be able to save all of the notes, lecture slides, papers, projects, and readings, that had consumed my life for the better part of the past two years was gone. Any record of my academic existance was now confined solely to that which was available in print or online. The loss of all that music and movies in itunes, nothing compared to the value of the papers and assignments I had worked so hard to compile, not to mention all of the notes that had accompanied my basketball and football articles, notes that with a final four run could have been valuable to me down the road.

I know, I should have backed everything up...but the point isnt that but rather that I think I am not alone in saying that my life is on my computer now.

That is far from the bad thing many are trying to make it out to be. In one small machine I can carry around any piece of information I may need to access at a given time, I can perform any work task I may need to get done, I have the flexibility to not worry about where I may be because as long as the MacBook is there, I am as connected to school and work while in Boulder, Colorado as I am while in the Grainger Library.

But as I sat watching my right-hand man struggle to survive, connected to the wall via a functional but seemingly useless powercord, I couldnt help but think that there was something wrong with the reality that along with that hard drive will go a little piece of my 20 year existance. Scholarship applications, successful essays, rough drafts of articles, resume drafts, swing videos, a few high school basketball videos, all of it gone in a moment's freeze, the hidden signal of a dying breath.

Our electronic lives are a very real part of the future. We have to stop trying to avoid putting our lives on our computers and instead embrace the possibilities that this new reality allows us. However, we also need to make sure that as a society we recognize how truly important data backup and recovery will be in the future. Just as firefighters go to great pains to save whatever possible of a family's photo albums, computer technicians must do the same with damaged and inaccessible files, a small thing to ask considering the lack of bravery necessary to embark on a difficult data recovery operation.

The future is one in which our lives will continue to be evermore electronic in nature. As a result, we must expect those responsible for those electronics to do whatever possible to ensure those products responsible for holding our lives are perfected and protected.