Even Rima Meyer, the weaver, had made peace with the family Kaypro. Just a few months ago Eric’s mother had given me the impression that she wouldn’t use the computer for a long time if at all. But now Gene had nearly finished his Maryland book—freeing up the Kaypro for her to practice on. “I use it for personal correspondence and for the fliers for the weaving classes I teach—anything that requires good, clean copy,” she said. The Meyers, in fact, didn’t even have a working typewriter in the house. Well, I thought, so much for all my blather about mandolin players and electric guitars.
To be sure, computerization would rarely be as worry-free and blissful as the advertisements depicted it. There would be computer crime, disk crashes, all the other high-tech woes. Few people would take to computers as naturally as had Charlie Bowie, with his playful, Hawkeye-Pierce attitude toward his little Zenith.
And how many could save their companies $200,000 a year like Alan Scharf? Or experience the exhilaration of Peter Hyams when Arthur Clarke’s letters flashed across his green screen? Or the satisfaction that Rob Barnaby received by writing a software classic like WordStar?
But if computer users not only chose their machines and software well but used them well, if they formed users groups rather than trust peripatetic sales reps, if they avoided technobullies and hired consultants carefully, if they trained employees in a nonintimidating way, if they computerized humanely as well as efficiently, if they safeguarded their data security, if they prepared for the future through telecommuting when appropriate, if they showed persistence and sense, enough rewards were there, and they’d find the Silicon Jungle to be not only survivable but friendly.
Afterword
It’s November 1984 now, and I’ve sold my Kaypro.
Business computers are production tools, not family heirlooms; when I found that the Kaypro’s screen and storage capacity were becoming inadequate for my needs, I unsentimentally ran want ads. The new owner—a church magazine using the Kaypro for lighter-duty work such as letter writing—couldn’t be happier.
The Kaypro’s replacement was a sleek Victor 9000. I was growing accustomed to it when a writer friend, Stephen Banker, called with news of an auction at a shut-down computer store a few miles from my apartment. A year and one-half ago the store’s managers and I had argued about the Kaypro’s merits versus the Osborne’s. They’d gambled on the wrong machine, the Osborne. Micro sales in general were growing, but this business had perished in the Silicon Jungle.
Now I returned to the store and saw the debris of the micro revolution. Spread out haphazardly on long tables, treated like dead fish, were the computers that I’d seen glamorized on the covers of the micro magazines just months before.