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The Bits Are Willing, but the Batteries Are Weak
From: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2003 04:50:02 -0400
The Bits Are Willing, but the Batteries Are Weak August 18, 2003 By AMY HARMON For many Internet addicts, the blackout last week was a rude reminder of just how decisively the vaunted 21st-century digital lifestyle can be laid low by a disruption in 19th-century electrons. While hardly enjoyable, being severed from the usual sources of food, water and transportation has occurred in previous power failures. But losing access to the digitized information that permeates our lives - from work-related records to Google searches to e-mail love letters - punctured a cherished illusion of the cyberage: that cyberspace is a separate universe, immune from real-world physics. Digital bits are often portrayed as a parallel world. If we do not need bodies to communicate or bookstores to buy books, the intuition beckons, why would we need something as mundane as power cords? But under cover of blackout, the digital world revealed itself as very much in electricity's thrall. Surely, it should have been obvious: personal computers do not work when they are not plugged in. Laptops and MP3 players require batteries, as in charged. "Power electrons are the mother's milk of the information age and power distribution is a lot more fragile than we imagine," said Paul Saffo, director of the Institute for the Future. "Carry spare batteries." Yet to judge by the confusion, frustration and occasional acts of desperation during the electricity cutoff, some stalwarts of the information age have not fully grasped that they are subject to something as prosaic as a blown fuse. "I was in the middle of writing an important work e-mail," said an aggrieved Mike Pearlstein, an animator drinking lukewarm beer with newly befriended neighbors at a restaurant in the Chelsea section of Manhattan on Thursday night. "I tried to use the batteries, but they weren't working; nothing was working." When one of his companions observed that had he been glued to his computer, he would not have had the pleasure of meeting them on his apartment stoop that night, he simply said, "I really wanted to send that e-mail." Coming just two days after the latest Internet worm, Blaster, caused headaches for many computer users, the blackout further underscored the vulnerability to technology that millions of people have come to take for granted. The Internet itself, designed to route around damage and bolstered by a battery back-up at leading telecommunications companies, held up just fine during the power loss. But traffic dipped at eBay, Amazon and other electronic commerce sites because people could not plug in to log on. "We've transitioned to a computer-based world where we need reliable power," said David J. Farber, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University who was married in New York three minutes before the 1965 blackout. "When things like this happen, our whole information society sits there and sort of shakes because we can't get at it." For Mr. Farber's son, Manny, 35, the first of his difficulties came when he needed to call colleagues on Friday. He was confident that an antique rotary phone he had would stand in for the fancy cordless one that had been rendered useless by the blackout - until he realized that the phone numbers he needed were stored on his computer. "I have a business-card scanner," Manny Farber explained. "I do have backups, but they're on CD's." As the batteries on his cellphone and digital camera ran low on Friday, Mr. Farber said he was contemplating buying a meal he did not particularly want at a diner in a neighborhood that had power so that he might surreptitiously charge the devices. With the dependency on electrons beginning to sink in, digital information refugees began to ration the battery power on their portable devices like water. Lorna Keuning, 35, of Park Slope, Brooklyn, forced herself to shut down her iBook on Thursday night when the battery meter was in the red so she would have enough charge to check the Internet in the morning. Her first act on waking up to find the power back on was to plug it in. "From now on, I'm always going to make sure it's fully charged," Ms. Keuning vowed. The longer-term significance of such temporary inconveniences may be negligible, but experts on Internet infrastructure say it is increasingly important to strengthen the link between the dual grids of electricity and information that power the economy. Jessica Litman, a law professor who lives in Ann Arbor, Mich., said she kept going halfway up the stairs to her computer to get blackout news online before remembering that her sole news source at that point was the car radio. The experience made her appreciate both the luxury of electric power and the ability to tailor her Internet news delivery. "A car radio tells me what it wants to tell me," Ms. Litman said. "One of the things I realized was how differently I think about the news." Sapped of their potency, the sights and sounds of digital devices can become even more conspicuous. In the dark, cellphones served as pale blue flashlights even when they would not connect their callers. Strangers debated the merits of calling plans while constantly hitting redial. " Verizon works, Cingular doesn't," declared Paul Likens, 38, holding one phone to each ear at a table outside a Chelsea restaurant. Their batteries dying, some people plugged cellphones into the cigarette lighters of their cars to make calls. The lucky owners of BlackBerry devices, which rely on an older network than mobile phones, occasionally sent text messages for the less fortunate. George Nemeth, of Painesville, Ohio, learned of the blackout during a cellphone call with a friend whose power supplies, connecting several home computers, started beeping the alarms of an unexpected surge. Mr. Nemeth, who keeps an online journal known as a Web log or blog devoted to Cleveland-related news, said his immediate impulse was to post the news. But when he got home, there was no power at his house either. "It was disturbing," Mr. Nemeth said. "But my wife enjoyed it because we actually talked for the whole time. When we have power, we're usually both on the computer." Indeed, many found the 24-hour respite from computers a welcome break. Debbie Dick, an insurance consultant who lives in Detroit, said she had spent the time reading and grilling outside with her 15-year-old daughter. "I look at it as time to relax," said Ms. Dick, 34, as she waited in a line for gasoline on Friday afternoon. But for those who use high-speed connections to instant-message friends and family, or to shop, work, or get news and sometimes post it themselves, the withdrawal symptoms were acute. "Panic sets in when there's a slightest glitch," Jen Chung, editor of the Gothamist Web log, wrote in an e-mail message. "Something like this blackout puts life on hold." For some bloggers, it was a time for extreme measures. Grant Barrett wrote Thursday evening on his blog, www.worldnewyork.net, "Keeping it short because I'm doing it the old-fashioned way: laptop battery, flashlight and dial-up, the bare necessities." He had just trudged home from Midtown Manhattan to Greenpoint, Brooklyn. "It's now past sundown and the city is black." Mr. Barrett posted digital pictures, captions and his personal blackout story using a slow dial-up Internet account because his high-speed router required electricity. "It's the human communication impulse," Mr. Barrett said by telephone of his compulsion to post under such conditions. "Does that sound too grandiose? It's just some moron typing in the dark." If so, he was not the only one, although other candlelight bloggers appear to have waited until the next morning to post their accounts. At www.camworld.com, Cameron Barrett (no relation) posted a selected list of New York blogs, covering blackout accounts from playing Monopoly by flashlight to being stuck on the Q train. At a time when the zeros and ones of computer communication seem to zip through the ether, weaving in and out of blogs, phones, music players, bank accounts and address books, the idea that digital data operate in their own dimension is seductive. But until long-promised new fuel technologies - from fuel cells to mictoturbines to Sterling engines - liberate cyberspace from the power grid, the digital economy will continue to rely on Thomas A. Edison's technology. Ms. Keuning, during an interview late Friday night touching on her battery-saving practices, stopped in midsentence and inhaled sharply as her illuminated laptop screen went dark: `Oooh, something just happened; we're having a power surge," she said. Then Ms. Keuning, a media buyer whose blackout blog entry is posted at www.lornagrl.com, breathed out as she realized that she'd made a mistake."My computer just went to screensaver," she said. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/18/technology/18DIGI.html?ex=1062196346&ei=1&en=3d819d5af44dc71e --------------------------------- Get Home Delivery of The New York Times Newspaper. Imagine reading The New York Times any time & anywhere you like! Leisurely catch up on events & expand your horizons. Enjoy now for 50% off Home Delivery! 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- The Bits Are Willing, but the Batteries Are Weak Dave Farber (Aug 18)