[HoB/D] Deputies' email, and my experience with computers

[Louie Crew <lcrew@andromeda.rutgers.edu>]

Before GC 1997, I was able to collect email addresses for 19% of the
deputies.

Before GC 2000, I was able to collect email addresses for 77.4% of the
deputies.

Before GC 2003, I was able to collect email addresses for 93.3% of the
deputies.

Before GC 2006, I was able to collect email addresses for 90.3% of the
deputies.

I have collected email addresses for 94.6% of the deputies headed for
Anaheim.

And for each convention, many others used email addresses which I was not
able to find.

Surely 5 percent of us (or less) should not hold the House of Deputies
hostage to the huge expense we currently pay to stomp TEC's carbon
footprint.  There are significant personal savings as well:

In 1993 I spent $1,607.32 for postage.  In 2008, I spent $25.44.

In 1993 I spent $1,051.33 for office supplies, much of it for paper and
printer.  In 2008 I spent $57.41.

I now rarely print anything.  Nor will I bring my BLUE BOOK to Anaheim in
hard copy:  it's much too heavy and bulky, and it provides none of the
search power of the digital version.

Recently I spent over 2 hours searching for specific information in the
JOURNAL OF THE 2006 GENERAL CONVENTION, with no luck.  Then I remembered
that I have a digital version.  With it I found the information in 4
minutes, counting the time to find and load the cd.

My 1971 Ph.D. dissertation was one of the first in an English Department
to make extensive use of computers.

I bought my first PC in January 1983, an Osborne CP/M machine.  It weighed
24 pounds. had only 64K of RAM, and cost just under $2,000. I sold my
great-grandfather's calendar clock to pay for it.  The president of my
bank saw it and said the bank had used an entire floor to generate that
much RAM for its huge computer several years earlier -- complete with a
cooling system for the machine.  The screen of the Osborne was was about 5
inches by 4 inches.

With my new Osborne, I moved to China in the summer of 1983, and stayed
for four years, one in Beijing and three in Hong Kong. The customs
officers in Beijing said they were confiscating the computer as a "spy
machine" until I explained to them that it was a "Hollywood Typewriter."

In Hong Kong I harnessed WordStar's Mailmerge to teach me Cantonese. My
essay explaining the process won a prize as the "Best Article of the Year"
by the Hong Kong Computer Society in 1986, not a typical item in the
journal of computer professionals. The prize itself was a true antique:  a
plastic pyramid which covered a cathode-ray tube like those which twenty
years earlier had heated up the computer of my bank in Wisconsin..

My last two years in Hong Kong I received no paper from my students: they
submitted all 'papers' on disks, and shared their 'writing 'with all
others in the class.  Shortly after I arrived at Rutgers twenty years ago,
I required my students to publish all of their 'papers' on the web.

When I was chair of Rutgers' senate, (1997-99), a dean complained to me
that he had not received a document.

"We sent it by email," I explained.

"I don't read email," he replied.

"Then you will need to have your secretary read it and print it out for
you."

"I would prefer fax," he insisted.

"It takes longer to send one person a fax than it takes to send all 200
senators the same document by email.  Rutgers spends large sums of money
to make email available to us.  Rutgers no longer provides a groom or
stable or functioning hitch if you insist on riding your horse to work. To
maintain a horse costs more than it costs to maintain an economy car."

"You are serious," he said, smiling.

"Yes," I said, smiling.

Louie, L1 Newark

Louie Crew, 377 S. Harrison St., 12D, East Orange, NJ 07018 973-395-1068
http://queereye4lectionary.blogspot.com/  Queer Eye for the Lectionary