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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

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

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The Bits Are Willing, but the Batteries Are Weak Dave Farber (Aug 18)