A Slip of the Keyboard Read Free

if this is Paradise. (Motel up the road apparently has a phone number one digit different from ours.) Give humorous rejoinder number three.
    Stare at screen.
    Start wondering, perhaps not eagle’s fault after all, it just had job to do, it had been flying too many missions, jeez, you get thrown out of eagle air force if you start worrying about the innocent philosophers you’re dropping your tortoises on. Hatch-22. No.
    Stare at screen.
    No. It was obviously tortoise’s idea all along. Had grudge against playwright, perhaps tortoises had been insulted in latest play, perhaps offended at speed-ist jokes, perhaps had seen tortoiseshellspectacles: you dirty rat, you got my brother. So hijacked eagle, hanging on to desperate bird’s legs like the tortoise in the old Friends of the Earth logo, giving directions in muffled voice, vector 19, beepbeepbeep, Geronimooooo.…
    Stare at screen.
    Wonder if eagle has anything else a desperate tortoise could hang on to.
    Look up biology of birds in encyclopedia in box on stairs. Gosh.
    Supper.
    Stare at screen. Turn ideas over and over. Tortoises, bald head, eagles. Hmm. No, can’t be playwright, what sort of person would tortoises instantly dislike?
    Midnight …
    Stare at screen. Vaguely aware right hand has hit keys to open new file. Start breathing very slowly.
    Write 1,943 words.
    Bed.
    For a day there, thought we weren’t going to make it.

P ALMTOP

    The Independent , 9 July 1993
    You think of these kind of computers as portable, but they aren’t really—you could anchor a ship with my old Olivetti. Mine probably still work—I took good care of them—and although I have no particular need of them, I can’t bring myself to throw away what is now vintage technology
.
    I remember my first portable computer. It weighed fifteen pounds. The power supply was separate and in many ways resembled a small brick. The damn thing nearly killed me.
    The next one was a mere eight pounds, although there was still a (smaller) brick. I thought that was light until I had to run across an airport carrying it.
    It dawned on me what was wrong. The important thing about portable computers, the common element, the nub or crux of the whole ethos, as it were, is that you’re supposed to be able to carry them. What’s the good of a machine that won’t fit inside a briefcasea
long with all the other things you want to carry in there
? Even eight pounds isn’t portable. Eight pounds is an item of luggage.
    It always puzzled me why the weight of portable machines wasn’t the first thing mentioned in any review. It tends to be in the small print even now, way down the page. This is because reviewers get hypnotized by shiny discs and glittery screens. Let them carry them around for a day, say I. Let them hoick them around so they can get on with their work in studio green rooms and hotels and the backs of cabs.
    I grew up reading science fiction and there were always these guys carrying pocket computers which could talk and keep track of their diary and run whole planets. They never got hernias carrying the things. I didn’t see why I should either. I was suffering from the opposite of future shock, whatever that is. Future suction? I don’t want arms reaching to my knees, but I like to have a computer around.
    I entered the palmtop world.
    Jargon crops up everywhere. Once there were big machines that sat on desks, and there were portables (more or less). Now there are ultraportables and subnotebooks and personal digital assistants and palmtops and pocketbooks. They’re all very loosely defined by size and weight and the whim of the person describing them. Basically, they’re all small and light.
    They all occupy the twilight zone between laptops (the aforesaid portables, although now the bulk of new machines do quite a lot more than the ones I’ve had and weigh in at around six pounds plus quite a small brick) and small calculators.
    The first acquisition was the Atari Portfolio, several years