When Technology Fails
As a virtual bar association operating in cyberspace, we spend a lot of time and energy thinking about things like digital identity, trust, and avoidance of cybercrime. These are important issues when we are thinking about how intrusive the Internet can be, and how annoying all those unsolicited and unwanted intrustions on our life can be, particularly when we have no way of verifying the identity of the intruders.
However, when your computer crashes and must be rebuilt, as mine just was, you begin to understand how blind and unconnected you are without the Internet and its related technologies.
I spent 15 days “unconnected,” and I’m just beginning to recover. Part of the time I was travelling, so the rebuild didn’t start until 10 days after my crash. It didn’t matter as much when I was out of town because I was out of town. But, when I got back on the weekend and had to wait until Monday to take my computer to experts who could “heal” it, and then it took until Friday to get it working, I was frantic, depressed and lonely.
How would I ever catch up on my work? Did I lose out on an ebay auction? (Yes.) If my bid had been successful, would I get a reputation as a slow payer because I didn’t know I’d won the item for 4 days (not a problem in this case since I was outbid). Would I be late on paying any of my regular bills? And so on.
I came to understand deeply something I knew before: I am completely dependent on technology for my livelihood and for contact with the outside world, but I’m not competent to fix things beyond the most basic of problems. Knowing that I am not alone in this place is small consolation when it is my computer that has failed me.
Ah, I guess I know for certain that I’m living life on the edge!
Susan Waters, EDM, CAE
Executive Director
October 12th, 2006 at 8:18 pm
When technology fails, being disconnected makes it very difficult to communicate and creates issues that go beyond personal challenges. The assumption that we read about in the news and is reported worldwide that we are all connected all the time. Nothing is further from the truth. In IBO, we work with people in Africa who constantly remind us that when they don’t respond to our e-mails, it isn’t that they aren’t reading them, or ignoring us; it’s likely because they don’t have electricity at that moment. When our computers crash in California or Massachusetts, and, it happens, and days go by before we can reconnect, people who are expecting return e-mails are left wondering what is wrong. “Why did the message I sent not get responded to right away? Should I send another e-mail? Should I call?”
Technology is imperfect and as IT people in big law firms work to make their lawyers 100% connected all the time, with Blackberrys and Treos becoming ubiquitous on vacations (?), those of us without IT staff face the problem of having another job - staying connected, or, risking that those who want to contact us may wonder what has happened when we ‘disappear’ for a few days.
None of this makes sense. We have gotten ourselves into a trap of being available 24/7 and we can blame it, if we want to, on the technology. The technology is both a curse and a blessing. We have to learn to better manage the technology and our relationship to it and to others who use the technology to communicate with us.
Jeff Aresty