January 3, 2006
A friend of mine (and future author of a book by someone I know) is currently looking to pay the bills so she is going on a job interview tomorrow. She emailed her resume to me, and I critiqued it for her — certainly not a remarkable series of events in this day and age, but I’m old enough to remember when something this simple would have seemed miraculous, or at best a kludgey and expensive proposition sorted out by fax machines and excessive long distance charges. I also remember when I thought erasable typing paper was a pretty nifty concept. Yet I didn’t even think twice about it while I was reading her resume - this reproduction of a digital artifact sitting on a hard drive very far away - now printed and in my hand with red ink and scribbles. My document, her document, the catalyst of an intense, but enjoyable conversation. Would we have done this so casually if we were still using dialup modems? She would have had to dial in, send the email, log out, disconnect, call me, chit-chat and tell me about the email so I would see it tonight, hang up while I dialed in, etc. Still pretty amazing, but nowhere near as immediate as what we experienced tonight. I know I’m being corny, but this stuff changes the way we do things, changes the assumptions we work from, and yet we adapt to it fast enough to take it for granted.