Back Online

I just got a computer back in my hands. It's not the same computer... that one appears to have a fried logic board or some other piece of hardware, and it's going to require shipping back to Apple. I'm now using my previous computer while I'm away, restored with its most recent backup... which was (unfortunately) made almost 10 days before I left home.

My computer nags me when it has been 10 days since I last backed up, and it hadn't nagged me — so I knew it wasn't more than 10 days, but it turned out it was almost 10 days on the nose. So I've lost whatever I did for the last week and a half (most importantly, minutes from at least three meetings where I'm the secretary, made in the two days before I left...plus browser tabs I had opened, and I'm not sure what else). Email, photos, and many shared documents are stored in the cloud, so none of that is lost.

Before this computer arrived, I went about 48 hours without access to a computer (not counting my phone, which is also a teeny tiny computer). I think this is the longest I've lacked access to one since some time in the 1980s; I'm not sure when exactly. 

It made me realize how interdependent my way of life is with this device, given the roles I've taken on (writing, database work, note-taking, official communication with public officials, this blog). I find all of that hard to do within the confines of my phone, and I haven't set up passwords to access most things that are needed to conduct my life through my phone, either. 

This personal 48-hour gap made me think of Vannevar Bush's 1945 concept of the memex, an "enlarged intimate supplement to ... memory." I think lacking my phone for 48 hours would probably be even a bigger disruption (which I don't want to contemplate), but this was bad enough. I hope it never happens again as long as these devices are part of the way we do things in this modern world.

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It has been odd to have this happening (in the midst of traveling for a family medical situation) while Israel is destroying Gaza and there was another mass killing in Maine. My computer problem is meaningless, but extremely disruptive to daily life.