Date of publication: August, 1998
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![[IMAGE]](finley.gif)
by Mike & Harvey Robbins |
© 1998 by Michael Finley
My favorite moment this summer came as I was paddling across a lake at sunset up by Nisswa. The rays of the dying sun corruscated on the still waters as I set down my paddle and sighed an appreciative sigh.
Then from a boat perhaps fifty feet away, I heard the beep of a cellphone. I can't tell you what a feeling of connection I had, knowing that another human and I, strangers really, were sharing this precious moment, and one of us was also sharing it with his broker.
A recent poll, conducted by Hart-Riehle-Hartwig Research on behalf of AT&T Corp., divided vacationers into three rough groups. Fully 30% of us, called "In-Commands," like the fellow in the next boat, take our technology with us when we head out. Among In-Commands on holiday, 48% carry cellphones, and 13% carry laptop computers. A third return business calls and almost half check for messages at least twice a week.
But the tug of technology comes less from the job than from inner prompting. A full 37% conceded that the pressure to stay in touch comes from themselves.
Slightly fewer, 29% , called "Incommunicadoes," prefer to pull the plug on everything and get completely away from LED indicators. Only 1% of Incommunicadoes check work messages every other day or more. Six in 10 said they feel no pressure to stay in touch, and 77% said they don't worry about work and home matters. They're on vacation.
The largest third, at 40%, is the "In-Betweens," meaning they want to take some of their stuff with them, but not all of it. They like to be the ones doing the calling.
When I was younger, and when it was harder to be an In-Command, I was one anyway. In spades. I devised elaborate strategies for snaking 100 foot deer-hunter-orange extension cables through the woods, hooking up clip-on lamps, my computer, and my necessary boom-box, so that I could do in a tent or primitive cabin the exact same thing I went on vacation to get away from -- work.
I carried a microcassette recorder with me everywhere, and I would drive 30 miles into town every day so I could place a call to my home phone and see if I got any messages that needed answering. I never did, but hey, it gave me something to do.
My worst experience came when I plugged my laptop into the camper's cigarette lighter, and a rectangular cloud of smoke poured out of the computer case.
In recent years, I've been an In-Betweener. If I take a laptop along, it's for doing something fun with, writing letters, or playing solitaire. And never to a tent. I have sworn this to my family, and they have held me to it. A laptop without at least a picnic table to put it on is a sad thing indeed.
And I am beginning, as I get older and stupider, to hear the call of the wild. The wilderness, which used to seem a cold and pointless interruption of important work, is starting to seem like a lovely place to just be.
If I want to write a letter or a note to myself, I am discovering the pleasure of unfolding a steno pad, taking the pen cap off with my teeth, and writing in cursive on the yellow paper. You can't manipulate the words after they are down, but you can cross them out, and you can draw arrows to show where you want things to go. You can even create graphics by hand, like the one with the Kilroy guy peeking over the tabletop. It's fun. And my handwriting is starting to come back.
Plus, you have the whole world to listen to. The laughter of the loon. The hammer of the woodpecker. The sploosh of a snapping turtle diving from a log. Which was what one did when my In-Command friend in the next boat answered his cellphone.
What I wished at that moment is something I have to share with you. It was the wish so many of us have, when we see people chatting into their handsets in a conspicuously inappropriate time or place, and knowing about the reports that cellphone use may cause brain cancer.
I wished him god speed.
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