The Silicon Jungle

Chapter 7 and Backup Vii, You’ll Learn (1) the Basics, (2) When Charts

are worth the trouble, and (3) how to select the best programs in that category. Most existing computer guides are overly technical about graphics, or they just about shun the subject. That’s too bad. Graphics can actually save your company money; computerized charts can help you set priorities and keep your projects on schedule. At times, too, there are other advantages. A little Macintosh won’t replace your art department, but it might enable you to whip up flashy graphs to impress your customers.

Even with the supposedly simple Mac-style machines, however, you may still need a good consultant—one of the topics of Chapter 8, “People.”

He or she can help you select the right software, for instance, or teach you how to use it. But you can’t always trust credentials, and here you’ll read of a young company that wasted $40,000 on the wrong consultants and their bungles. One man was so learned in computers that he had helped design the systems on an aircraft carrier, yet he lacked the exact technical expertise to help the company get its work done.

My old newspaper in the Midwest made another people-type mistake, letting a computer expert befuddle staffers with technical jargon. A white-haired editor suffered especially. Although he knew his town better than did just about any other newsman and had been a fixture in the scruffy city rooms since World War II, the paper exiled him from the copy desk after the training program failed him. His health gave out amid the strain, and he ended up on extended sick leave, done in partly by the course’s scary talk of bits and bytes. You use a calculator without being—as one man put it—“calculator literate.” Why must you be “computer literate”? Be so if you’re an aspiring programmer or if you enjoy computers as a hobby. If, however, you don’t, well, forget it. Instead, simply concentrate on (1) finding the right experts for the grubby technical chores and (2) helping yourself and your employees learn the programs of use on the job.

You can also treat people well by guarding against “The Hal Syndrome.” I’ve named Chapter 9 after the uppity computer in 2001 and 2010.

The best weapons against Hal are good, common-sense ones, like viewable screens and easy-to-use keyboards, which can cut down on headaches and backaches. Forget about the white tiles and bright fluorescents you see in traditional computer rooms. They can torture your eyes. As for keyboards, you’ll learn the wisdom of using the detachable kind, which makes it easier for you to be the right distance from both the keyboard and the screen. Why not buy equipment that can adjust to both your eyes and your back? Foreigners caught on to this issue much more quickly than we did; some European firms even sawed the keyboards off American-made terminals. And now U.S. workers are demanding action. “They affected my stomach quite a bit,” a former insurance company worker says of the machines that caused her to quit her job. “Most days I worked I would throw up in the ladies room.” Whether you use micros or big computers, you’ll get more work out of people—and be able to hire better ones—if the equipment is comfortable to use. Still another precaution against Hal is good job design. See if you can rotate your employees’ computer work with other duties to reduce the stress of being at the keyboard all day.

In the Hal Syndrome chapter, you won’t simply read academic wisdom. Instead, you’ll hear about the true health and safety concerns of people working the computer keyboards—eminently valid worries in many cases.

And you’ll read in an accompanying backup about another hot topic in this era of contact between man and machine. It’s the =mouse=, the palm-sized gadget that you push along your desktop to guide the =cursor= (the little blinking line or other marker that shows where you’re typing on the computer screen).

Some manufacturers love the mouse as a marketing gimmick. And it’s indeed nice for graphics. If you’re a writer or secretary, however, and if you lack three hands, you may be better off mouseless. Why? See Backup X, “Of Mice and Men.”

I’ll also try some candor on another touchy topic—computer crime.

In Chapter 10, “Jewels that Blip,” you’ll learn how to protect your company secrets inside your computer and how to prevent the machines from suffering amnesia and destroying electronic records. Although electronic Willie Suttons exist, your real worries are often mundane. This book won’t keep you from spilling coffee on a floppy disk, but it will tell how, using good software and good habits, you can help ward off both crooks and accidents.

Much of Chapter 10 is about larger computers, and quite logically so. Increasingly, your micros will be talking to mainframes, as the big machines are called, and your facts are only as safe as the electronic repositories where you store them.

Computer security will particularly matter in the era of telecommuting, a subject covered in Chapter 11, “Wired to Work,” which will show you how “electronic cottages” often can be both productive and humane.

A California professor says by 1990 as many as 10 million U.S. workers could be tapping away on keyboards at home. In Chapter 11, you’ll learn how you may be able to “telecommute” within weeks or months if (1) your boss and company are sympathetic and (2) your office politics permit you to do so without harming your career. Why wait for official telecommuting programs from corporate headquarters? Chapter 11 advocates nothing less than a grass-roots telecommuting movement by corporate writers, programmers, salespeople, and working mothers. Toting up the savings that telecommuting can yield, more and more corporations will encourage experiments. Many people—though not all—thrive on it.

“It seems foolish for me to get in a car to go to an office,” said a Washington-area telecommuter, “if I can go to that office by phone.” Without the wear and tear of rush-hour driving he became more productive.

You needn’t telecommute every day. The chapter, in fact, starts with the example of the rush-hour hater who made it a point to keep up with the office crowd in person on occasion.

Chapter 12, “how I Found ‘god’ on Mci (and a Few Other Odds and Ends

about Electronic Mail),” tells more about sending computer messages over the phone lines. Some E-mail nets even link up with the old Telex networks. During the writing of this book I corresponded via computer with people ranging from William F. Buckley, Jr., to Captain Zap and the MCI mail-Telex connection transmitted last-minute changes to my publisher.

In Chapter 13, “Net Gain$,” you’ll learn how different computers in your own office can share the same programs and exchange information without people constantly having to carry floppy disks from one desk to another. A Michigan company may be enjoying as much as DLR $1,000 a year more in effective work time from each staffer as a result of its internal computer net.

Of course, with today’s imperfect technology, such hookups can be a real struggle. But so often they’re worth it.

You could say the same, indeed, of micros in general—today and in the future.

It seemed especially true when, for my last chapter, I tried to reach Arthur Clarke’s micro in Sri Lanka. I wanted him to answer questions about microcomputers in 2001—the year in which his Hal was killing humans. Did our phone-computer connection succeed? Read Chapter 14, “As the Jungle Thickens.”

Struggles notwithstanding, computers often do pay for harried professionals and business people. “This $5,000 machine has saved me from hiring a $20,000-a-year assistant,” said a New York investment adviser using an IBM PC to write reports and make financial calculations at home. A young trader forsook the bedlam at the New York Cotton Exchange for an electronic office in his apartment. Now he can go to work in his bathrobe and delay his shower until lunchtime. “It’s more challenging this way,” he said. “More contemplation, less raw instinct.”

Footnote 5:

The examples of the investment adviser and cotton trader come from New York magazine.

Another self-employed man, Jimmy Carter, composed his memoirs on a word processor—perhaps inspired by the example of a former Carter speech writer who wrote a well-reviewed book on national defense.

Then there’s Isaac Asimov, the legendary science-fiction novelist, who, even with an ancient manual, could write faster than the old Teletype machines could clatter along. But he didn’t always produce the neatest copy. “How different now!” he exulted in an article. “Staring at a page of type on a television screen, I eagerly look for typos so I can have the fun of changing them.” You needn’t be a professional author, however, to benefit from computerized writing. In Maryland, an architect-consultant, once typewriter shy, is now churning out reports several hundred pages long on his IBM PC.

“A boon to the small businessman” is how Hugh Hunt, a son of the late oilman H. L. Hunt, described micros. “Now he can compete with the larger corporations as far as obtaining data and processing it quickly.”

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