The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
The longer I have my laptop, the more that I demand to use it no matter where I am. I admit it, I'm spoiled, but I also have to admit that having a laptop with me just about anywhere I go has changed the way that I use my computer. Before I bought a laptop, I could happily leave town for several days and log back on to check my e-mail when I got home, answer what I needed to, find out the news, and then log back off. It wasn't a big deal to have a few days without Internet service. Now, I think I'd be in a genuine panic without my machine and access at least every few days. Granted, what has become possible to do using computers has changed rapidly over the last few years, and how I use my machine has changed. Work is busier, I am involved in projects far-flung across the globe, and I am generally in contact with a lot more people now than in the past, and this makes it important that I have very regular Internet access. Traveling to Flin Flon is a perfect example. A few weeks ago I brought several kids from Snow Lake to Flin Flon to compete in the regional science fair (which was organized and run very well, by the way). I checked into my hotel expecting to have a fairly quiet night to catch up on some writing I needed to do, only to open my laptop and find free high-speed wireless Internet service! Then last week, passing through The Pas, I was pleased to see a sign outside the Super 8 advertising the same thing. Even up here, people are starting to demand this service. I was amazed. Laptops used to be a toy for rich executives, but now they account for almost 50 per cent of total computer sales. With longer lasting batteries, DVD players, falling prices, and wireless service popping up everywhere, they are now a reasonable investment when buying a new computer. Another reason behind this change is because of the way the Internet is changing. If you needed regular access to the Internet in the past, it was mostly for news and e-mail. Now with blogs, podcasts, online video, and other forms of social software rapidly growing in popularity, more people look to their computer, and their access to the Internet, as a place to be entertained. Over the next year, as more newly released movies and TV shows become available online, our computers will become a merged space between television and source of written information. Recent statistics show that over 40 per cent of people who use the Internet are creators of information. Whether through posting to blogs, creating podcasts using simple tools like Odeo, uploading video files to YouTube or pictures and bookmarks to Flickr and del.icio.us, people are using the Internet as "outboard brains", as science fiction writer Cory Doctorow has said. We store our stuff online, keep our memories online, and need access to our stuff no matter where we are. Some 2,500 years ago, Plato worried that people's ability to write would impact their memories, as they wouldn't be as willing to memorize things. He was right, of course, and now having massive amounts of online storage for basically free is changing us again. We can store virtually anything forever, and with laptops and wireless service, we can access it no matter where we are. Changing brains for changing times. ([email protected])
