Throughout my travels, I have had a constant companion. He’s recorded all my experiences. He’s traveled with me from Ankara to Cappadocia and Istanbul to Cairo. He’s kept me in contact with friends, shown me American television when life abroad became too demanding and even helped me do my homework.
Now he has passed on. A moment of silence, if you please.
I’m speaking of my laptop — an Apple Macbook that’s served as my silicon sidekick since high school. So, wipe away your tears, dear reader — we speak of an inanimate object. There’s no reason to be upset.
My laptop’s hard drive crashed just under two weeks ago. I had finished watching “LOST” (a worthy last task for any computer) and was starting work on a paper when my hard drive began getting louder and louder, hotter and hotter. Then, the spinning pinwheel of doom (Apple’s version of the infamous PC “Blue Screen of Death”) appeared. Eventually everything went black.
My computer is now in the hands of Ahmed Bakr at Sync Computer Services. Insha’Allah he can perform some Frankenstein magic, resurrecting my machine from the dead, data intact. But I doubt it.
However, this situation presents advantages as well as disadvantages. Most Egyptians, 85 percent, don’t use computers or the Internet, at least not regularly, according to the World Bank (compare that with 60 percent of Turks and 28 percent of Americans). I came abroad to learn about the others’ lives, and, yet, with my computer linked up to the Internet, I was emulating a paltry 15 percent of Egyptians.
So for a week now I’ve embarked on a little experiment, and tried to use computers and the Internet as little as possible — a task made far easier when you’re computer-less (I’ve broken down once or twice; I did have to file this column). Here’s what I’ve learned:
Writing by hand is relaxing — and yet not at all. I wrote an essay by hand this week. It was a strange experience. Words come more slowly when writing by hand, and you can enter this trance where you feel in touch with centuries of authors. “Typing is a recent phenomenon,” you say. “The great authors of the world — Shakespeare, Milton — they all wrote by hand.” You become convinced you’re going to write all your essays this way. Then you’re faced with retyping your essay into a computer, keystroke by keystroke. The illusions of grandeur fade. Then you do a word count, and discover your pages of handwriting amount to 600 words, and there’s another thousand to go by nightfall. After that, writing by hand stops being relaxing.
History relies on paper. This is one of my Egyptology professor’s great fears. The only reason we know about ancient Egypt is because Egypt’s climate preserved their papyrus and monuments for almost 5,000 years. Granted, most of the information has been damaged, and scholars had to relearn hieroglyphics to glean anything from ancient texts. But still, the texts are there. My laptop’s hard drive wasn’t even able to preserve text for a full four years. What will historians 5,000 years from now be able to tell about me?
Mohamed ElBaradei’s support may be overstated. The Egypt-born former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s name keeps coming up as a contender for presidential elections next year. When he came to visit Cairo from France, 800 people came to cheer him on. His Facebook support group has almost 200,000 members. The Twitterverse is buzzing about how great he is, as is the Daily News Egypt’s newsroom.
Yet his supporters all seem Internet-based. That means he has a support base of, at maximum, 12 million Egyptians, and based on the backlash on the Twitterverse, it’s likely less. As for the 60-some million other Egyptians eligible to vote in next year’s presidential election, nobody knows where their support stands.
A computer’s importance changes based on class. When I told rich Egyptians, or any of my American friends my computer had broken, their response made it sound like a family member had died. “I am so sorry,” one person told me. “If there’s anything — anything — I can do to help, just let me know,” said another.
As for Hussein, who runs the toy store next to my building and always invites me for tea, he was less upset.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I think there’s a shop down the street if you want to buy a new one. Want to watch WWE?”
Yes, Hussein. I do want to watch WWE.
You can reach this columnist at thescene@theeagleonline.com.
