by Michael Finley
Copyright © 1998 by Michael Finley

Get your signed copy of The NEW Why Teams Don't Work by Mike & Harvey Robbins from Berrett-Koehler Publishers Just click on the book cover! A fully revised second edition of this award-winning classic by Harvey Robbins and Michael Finley Paperback Winner, Financial Times/Booz Allen & Hamilton Global Business Book Award, Best Management Book - The Americas, 1995 Table of contents and sample chapters of this book... Just click on the book cover to order your signed copy for only $12.95. Table of contents and sample chapters of this book... Why Change Doesn't Work: Why Initiatives Go Wrong and How to Try Again and Succeed Harvey Robbins, Michael Finley Hardcover Just click on the book cover to order your signed copy for only $12.95. "This is the first treatise on change we've seen that is actually entertaining. The authors cover human and organizational barriers to change and change theories, and then take a tour of management theory that's guaranteed to upset every reader at one point or another." -- HR ONLINE Table of contents and sample chapters of this book...

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Comments on this column:

Hm. Makes ya wonder just what might be growing in Mr. Gates' head...It could explain so much.

Scary stuff, m'man. I've been sitting in front of these doohickeys almost as long as you have. Any data going back to the Commodore age? I try not to think about my chronic headaches... Althea

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Enjoyed the latest installment. Do you recall the color TV X-Ray scare in the early 1970s or late 1960s? The problem was that the electrons hitting the screen had so much energy (due the the 25-30 KV required to light up the color phosphors) that X-Rays would be emitted if the acceleration voltage was too high. The problem was alleviated somewhat by redesigned high voltage power supplies that were "fail-safe" in that any failure mode would reduce, rather than increase, voltage.

I don't know if the newer TVs -- e3specially the large-screen TVs -- and computer monitors are designed the same way, but I haven't heard much about CRT X-rays for a long time.

-- Joe F.

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I found your article very interesting. I've asked myself the same question sometimes. Breast cancer and brain tumour. Both organs are pretty close to the monitor. I've been working with computers since about 1985 - using and teaching - so rooms full of computers.

--Dale Nolan

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A Master of the Wired World?

I just got my author's copies of a new book from Financial Times Management (London), MASTERS OF THE WIRED WORLD: Cyberspace Speaks Out.

What's remarkable is that this collection of manifestos about the new age a'dawning contains proclamations by Tony Blair, Al Gore, Charles Handy, Nicholas Negroponte, Arthur C. Clarke, Alvin Toffler ... and me.

Anne C. Leer, editor

To order, click here. Discounted price is $18.87 from Amazon.

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Did you hear the one about the guy who sat in front of his computer screen so long he got a brain tumor?

I think it was me. In February I learned I have a brain tumor called a meningioma -- not an especially big one, or an especially bad one, but problematic nonetheless.

And while no one knows exactly what causes brain tumors -- people suspect genetic damage, immune deficiencies, diet, chemicals, and hormones -- a popular candidate is electromagnetic fields of the sort that computer monitors create.

That they emit radiation is not in doubt. The technical name for a monitor, which is the same thing as a TV, is cathode ray tube. The rays are quite benign in the exposures people experienced for the last 100,000 years. But when you bathe in them day after day, for half a lifetime, they way we do these days -- who knows?

This is why moms tell their kids not to sit so close to the TV. Their young tissues, matched against the constant bombardment of rays, may be no match at all. The number of kids with brain tumors, particularly high-risk malignant tumors, is at an all-time high.

The office is a major source of electromagnetic fields. Besides monitors, fields are generated by printers, fax machines, uninterruptible power supplies, and power cables. Working in an office is like living under a power line.

It's even present in the body of your cell phone when you put it up against your ear -- right where my tumor is growing, incidentally. Sort of gives new meaning to the phrase cell phone.

I find this all very ironic, because I was an early adopter of personal computers and the home office. Though I really couldn't afford one, I was up and running way back in 1982, with a very clunky Apple II machine.

As the PC revolution took hold, I became a chronicler of the changes. I even wrote a handful of articles about radiation health. As early as 1986, I wrote that computer monitor radiation had never been positively linked to higher incidents of cancer, birth defects or miscarriages, but that there were scattered stories of computer workrooms with abnormally high cancer rates, and that some experts suggest that pregnant women should consider not sitting too long in front of one.

Isn't that the kind of advice you've grown to love? Alas, it was all I was able to put forth. Today I'm looking furiously across the Internet for more conclusive studies -- and the jury appears to still be out.

Fortunately, I am becoming more comfortable with uncertainty. It is, in fact, a lesson computers taught me. When a mainboard or hard drive died, you could never establish why the failure occurred. It cost too much to establish causation with any certainty, and parts were so cheap -- you simply replaced the mystery component and went on with your computing life.

Wish I could do that with my head.

The thing about uncertainty is, you're not even certain what you're uncertain about. If monitor radiation caused my tumor, for instance, is it wise for me to be typing this even now, in front of my monitor? Have I been cooking my tumor all these years, and am I still basting it in its own juices it today?

Or was formation of the tumor a one-time, one-cell event, that happened back in 1985, with that crummy, noisy CGA monitor I used for a year before the VGA standard arrived -- a one-time, one-cell event that, even if I had shut off my PC forever the moment after that single cell went kablooey, would have grown into what it is today regardless?

I dunno.

All I know is what a funny world it is. We have set all our Easter eggs into the basket of information technology, and wired ourselves to our world like living dynamoes. But our tissue, faced with all that stimulation, sprouts little beasts inside us.

And nobody wants to admit this is happening. What will the big monitor makers -- Samsung, NEC, Goldstar, CTX, and Panasonic -- do if epidemiologists pin the rap for 100,000 brain tumor annually, including 3,000 in kids under 16 on their lightly shielded boxes?

They'll say oops, of course. Margins are ultra-thin in that generic hardware business. No one buys a display thinking about health. Price and picture size are all anyone cares about.

And that clever Mr. Gates, who found a way to do reasonably well in the computer industry without ever making a computer, yet driving the whole shebang with his constantly improving operating systems.

He has the best of it. Hands clean, head clear, his eyes on the road ahead, while the rest of us totter and fall along the way.

Get your signed copy of The NEW Why Teams Don't Work by Mike & Harvey Robbins from Berrett-Koehler Publishers Just click on the book cover! A fully revised second edition of this award-winning classic by Harvey Robbins and Michael Finley Paperback Winner, Financial Times/Booz Allen & Hamilton Global Business Book Award, Best Management Book - The Americas, 1995 Table of contents and sample chapters of this book... Just click on the book cover to order your signed copy for only $12.95. Table of contents and sample chapters of this book... Why Change Doesn't Work: Why Initiatives Go Wrong and How to Try Again and Succeed Harvey Robbins, Michael Finley Hardcover Just click on the book cover to order your signed copy for only $12.95. "This is the first treatise on change we've seen that is actually entertaining. The authors cover human and organizational barriers to change and change theories, and then take a tour of management theory that's guaranteed to upset every reader at one point or another." -- HR ONLINE Table of contents and sample chapters of this book...

Why not bookmark Mike's columns for your weekly enjoyment?

Stimulate the economy, give a poet a dollar.

I enjoyed serving this essay up for you, and I did it for free. But this writer is currently out of work, and a bit of revenue would gladden his heart. If you'd like to contribute to this site, consider dropping a $1 tip in the "Honor Box" here. Just click the CLICK TO PAY image here. Thanks - Mike