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What
Hath God Wrought Dot Com
by Mad Dog
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Clinton's staff
churned out nearly 40 million e-mails. That’s about 14,000 a day, 570
an hour, and an awful lot of time taken away from important tasks like
searching online for naked photos of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. |
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It turns out your mother
was right when she spent the better part of your formative years
drumming it into your head that you can bring technology to the Luddite,
but you can’t make him use it. Okay, so that’s not really what she
said, she might have had she owned the computer you gave her two years
ago that she still can’t manage to turn on no matter how many times
you draw her an illustration showing that the power switch is the huge
button on the front.
This comes to mind because, contrary to his
wonk image, it turns out that Bill Clinton was a closet Luddite. Sure he
presided over the flowering of the Internet Age. And yes, his vice
president claimed to have invented the Internet, at least until he
explained that in his mind “inventing” and “voting to fund”
meant the same thing . But the truth is, Clinton didn’t make use of
the technology. While he was in the White House he sent only two e-mails
— count ‘em, two! — and they were a joke about a rabbi, a priest,
and Bob Dole which he forwarded to Hilary and Elizabeth Dole. Just
kidding. Actually the first one was a test e-mail to see if he knew how
to do it (“Wow, this is almost as much fun as lurking in the sex — I
mean, sax — chat room”) while the second was a note to John Glenn
who was orbiting Earth at the time. I’m sure Clinton would have
preferred to send Glenn a postcard but you know how hard it can be to
find one that says “Having a great time, wish Newt Gingrich was
there.”
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Last December the
International Telecommuni- cations Union voted to add a new character to
the Morse code arsenal, the first time they’ve done that since before
World War II. It’s the “@” symbol. |
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Contrast that with
how his staff used e-mail. According to a spokesperson at the Clinton
Presidential Foundation (motto: “Thongs are considered a foundation,
aren’t they?”), the former president’s staff churned out nearly 40
million e-mails. That’s about 14,000 a day, 570 an hour, and an awful
lot of time taken away from important tasks like searching online for
naked photos of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Every one of those e-mails will be
archived in the presidential library, including Clinton’s two, which
you’ll be able to find in a dusty corner of a rarely used hard drive
along with Hilary’s plan to fix the health care system.
The
foundation’s spokesperson says the reason there are so few e-mails
from Clinton is that he’s more of a personal note and telephone guy.
He’s probably like the people I run into who, when you e-mail them,
reply with, “Call me.” Or the editor I worked with a couple of years
ago who told me he only checked e-mail every few days, so if I sent one
I should call and let him know so he could go online and look for it.
Uh, are we missing a major concept here?
It’s high time everyone caught on to
using e-mail. After all, if Morse code can come kicking and screaming
into the 21st century, so can you. That’s right, last December the
International Telecommunications Union (motto: “Listen for the union
label”) voted to add a new character to the Morse code arsenal, the
first time they’ve done that since before World War II. It’s the
“@” symbol. You know, the one used in your e-mail address. Go ahead,
stop for a second and think about sending an e-mail address using Morse
Code. I’ll wait.
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When communicating
in Morse code you can use a simple declarative sentence and ask a
question, but you can’t emphasize anything. No wonder it never caught
on with the masses, it’s too monotone. |
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The new sign will
be dot-dash-dash-dot-dash-dot, which is the letter “A” followed by
“C.” They’re calling it the “commat,” which as far as I can
tell they made up because the word “at” is way too difficult to
pronounce. This change of symbol name reminds me of a few years ago when
some Internet start-up people thought it would be cute to pronounce
“www” as dub-dub-dub, so they walked around telling people their Web
site address sounding like drowning fish. If you want to know why it
didn’t catch on, just go to your local Burger King and ask them. But
wait until they’ve finished asking, “Would you like fries with
that?”
It’s
interesting that Morse code now has the “@” sign yet it still
doesn’t have an exclamation point. That’s right, when communicating
in Morse code you can use a simple declarative sentence and ask a
question, but you can’t emphasize anything. No wonder it never caught
on with the masses, it’s too monotone. Another symbol they don’t
have is the “#”, which we call the pound sign in the U.S. while most
other countries call it the “hash mark,” particularly in England
where they don’t want it to be confused with their hold-out against
the euro. In some geeky circles it’s called the octothorpe, which —
True Fact Alert! — was made up by a guy at Bell Labs during the
1960’s [insert hippie drug culture joke here] and hasn’t been
used since by anyone who doesn’t spend his spare time bemoaning the
demise of pocket protectors, slide rules, and lab coats as a fashion
statement.
I now have this image stuck in my head of
sailors on a battleship blinking huge lights, or using semaphore flags,
to send a message to someone on another ship: ”Email me at
heysailor@hotmail.com, and hurry.” There’s a better chance of that
happening than there is of someone emailing a message using Morse code.
Unless, of course, it’s from Bill Clinton.
©2004 Mad Dog
Productions, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
These columns appear in better newspapers across the country.
Read them in Morse code.
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