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Monday, May 31, 1999
The world is waiting for CONTROL Z
Turbulent times are no fun, but they can be worth the trouble if you manage to extract some useful lessons from them. Take our ongoing changeover to a new computer system . . .
Don't bother to deny it: I know exactly what you're thinking: Here's the columnist, staring hollow-eyed at his VDT in the wee hours of the morning, opting to deliver himself of one more screed at the expense of a perfectly respectable computer system and the nice people who are installing it.
Well, all right: There may be a kernel of truth there - but there's more to that. We're not talking cheap yuks here; we're talking a flash of insight of potentially world-historical proportions.
It's kind of like the day I was strolling aroung downtown Corpus Christi wondering, as I have so often wondered. what in the heck was responsible for those little black tar-like smudges that dot the sidewalks wherever you go.
My late colleague, friend and boss, Jerry Norman, and I had fitfully speculated on the matter for years. I spun out all manner of scenarios: Was this the work of aperson or persons unknown who sneaked out under cover of darkness to violate our otherwise-pristine sidewalks? While the city slept, did some mysterious tide wash in from the bay to deposit tiny tarballs on the concrete? . . .
Only within the last few months did the mystery finally resolve itself: It's chewing gum - old, thoroughly masticated and profoundly disgusting wads of Doublemint and Dentyne chucked away by passersby and weathered by time (and, doubtless, shoe leather) into their present state.
Heavy stuff. you bet. Now, get this: I had another such moment of piercing awareness just this week, and I have my new computer sensei to thank for it.
We'll call him Zeke. Why shouldn't we? That's his name, after all.
Among his many other admirable qualities, Zeke is endlessly patient with questions, pleas and gripes from disoriented and demoralized newscreatures caught up in the throes of New Computer Horrors.
I was having this little . . . problem. I was, in fact, beginning to suspect the system was toying with me: When I hit the ENTER button, the material I was working with sometimes flew right off to the far side of the screen . . . or disappeared entirely.
Zeke didn't have the answer right away, but he offered a suggestion: If you want to get back to where you were before you lost your material, just hit . . . CONTROL Z.
That, he explained, would restore the status quo that existed before your last command.
Well, you could've knocked me over with a feather. What an idea. What a notion. What a concept. A single key stroke, and all things new are made old again!
Now, the help this would afford me in rassling with the system was obvious . . . but I found the larger implications of CONTROL Z vastly more exciting:
Suppose, just suppose . . . suppose there were a CONTROL Z that could have the same effect on our personal lives!
Consider: There you are, serenely motoring along the interstate, and you come over the crest of a hill only to find a DPS trooper lying in wait for you. And lo: You find you're just ever so slightly over the limit. No problem! Just hit CONTROL Z and it never happened.
Or . . . Having concluded the purchase of some household appliance, you've allowed yourself to be persuaded into buying an extended-service warranty that, deep in your heart of hearts, you don't really want. CONTROL Z: You're off the hook.
Say your employer reacts less than sympathetically to your carefully reasoned appeal for recognition (read: more bucks), and you react to a rebuff with some ill-considered remarks regarding his ancestry. CONTROL Z: Take another run at it - but gently, gently.
As matters now stand, we have to clean up these little messes as best we can. But if we could, with a strategic assist from our computer-guru friends, come up with a CONTROL Z for the deplorably messy realm of human affairs, wouldn't this be a better old world for all of us?
Hopelessly unrealistic? Maybe . . . but if I hear even the faintest whisper of some as yet undreamt-of computer outfit making progress on the CONTROL Z front, I'm buying stock in that baby before you can say "Operator Error.''
(Brooks Peterson can be reached by phone at 886-3772, or by e-mail at petersonb@caller.com)
Brooks Peterson
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