JOIN USI browse for a book and my computer hints, “You might like this, that and the other.”
I have a strong suspicion that my computer is gradually taking over my life. How else can I account for the fact that it predicts my wishes, my secret longings and even my thoughts well before I have acknowledged them myself? Even who I send mail to is not my own decision. I decide to send a quiet mail to a friend and it silently rebukes me for becoming inclusive. “Add x, y and...?” it says in rhetorical vein. “Not this time.” I want to shout back.
I look for a book and it presumes it knows all my interests. “You might like this, that and the other,” it says, seemingly politely but with a hint of authority. I find myself muttering justifications of why I prefer this book over the other 50 paraded before me. Now the tone has changed to, “Usha, here is your reading list.” I thought my student days were done with. Things have reached such a pass that I can’t even look for information about a place to visit. It then throws me into disorder by suggesting a score of other, better (?) places, great bargains, hotels...! “Have I chosen the right place?” it makes me ask myself.
You would say I have not mastered the computer and you would be right. How else do you account for the fact that one fine morning I open my documents list and find that every one of the documents has been duplicated 5 times? Is it trying to tell me I am losing my memory and therefore, should keep multiple back-ups? Forget doing crossword puzzles to keep Alzheimers at bay. Just figure out what con the computer is up to. That mental exercise will keep anything away, including your wits.
When you open your documents and find that all the titles have inexplicably switched from an A to Z sequence to the complete opposite, you have not ‘lost’ it. It is just the computer’s way to help you order your life all over again. If you suffer from Shakespeare-mania as I do, and have happily chosen passwords from his works, one misspelt letter and it comes back with pretty obvious clues. “Try Avon, Bard, Hamlet, Verona...”
Now it is looking over my shoulder at my secret password life. The other day I was asked to create a password for a programme I wanted to access. I had barely begun the pleasurable exercise of picking a quote from a beloved author, when it gleefully gave me suggestions from a number of my favourite books! In no time, my life will be bared for all to see.
Fortunately, Facebook and I have not crossed paths. Otherwise, my deepest emotions, moods and responses would be out there. Is there nothing I can take to my grave? No mystery I can leave behind? Or should I look upon my laptop as an intimate from whom I have no secrets, who anticipates my every need, and cushions me from falling apart? As Hamlet might have added, perhaps there is a special providence in the touch of a keyboard.