Walter Hutchens’ Blog

Can you remember the first time you used a computer? Surfed the web? Took a digital photo?

When I was a kid I heard some elderly people recall the first time they watched television, rode in a car, got running water and had electricity connected to their homes.

For my generation the equivalent of getting “running water” is getting broadband internet access.

My own life bridges the digital revolution; I’ve lived BN and AN (before Net and after Net).

I do remember the first time I used a computer, saw a web page and took a digital photo. I recall a time when almost no phones were mobile.

Contrast my experience to my daughter’s. She’s five and often asks to go to “Disney dot com.” The video games she plays have astounding graphical richness (I had an Atari with Pong and Pacman). She’s never seen a camera that isn’t digital. It doesn’t surprise her that our music library is in the computer. The idea that television shows or movies can only be seen at fixed times and in fixed locations isn’t part of her life. It’s not remarkable to her that I can write (and she can “color”) on the screen of my Tablet PC. She uses the stylus to solve jigsaw puzzles (made from digital family photos). She plays tic tac toe and practices her own writing on it.

The first time I used a computer was 1986. I was a freshman in college. Some Apple IIs were in a “lab” students could use in the bottom floor of the library. A friend taught me not to hit return at the end of every line I typed. Word wrap and the notion of an endless page actually made me feel awkward and a bit disconcerted, not empowered.

Later I discovered the Macintosh. I remember sitting in the offices of the student newspaper where I was an editor, trying every available typeface. Watching the pages emerge from the laser printer felt like magic. That was empowering.

Macs revolutionized print publishing. It was a pre-cursor to the Internet revolution. I got drawn into desktop publishing.

Partly because I learned QuarkXpress I became editor of a small magazine in my early 20s. The previous editor was in his 50s and wasn’t able to make the transition to computer-based layout.

Using computers to design publications more quickly and cheaply drove adoption of personal computers in that organization, so those of us in the communications department became the firm’s leading-edge geeks.

I led the charge to overthrow an old IBM mainframe system and get computers on every desk. After that I was called the “director of communications and information systems.” The title was grander than the salary; I managed only a few people (and a lot of problems). But it exemplifies how technology’s creative destruction provides opportunities. I was riding the wave.

My next job was at Apple Computer. I edited their worldwide employee newsletter (then still a print publication).

I loved working at Apple. They gave me a Newton, sent me to China and Japan on business trips and paid me to follow technology and business developments in a company I cared about. I loved living in the Bay Area—Silicon Valley’s business environment was exciting, San Francisco’s culture rich, and after five years in Chicago the weather was sublime.

But I left after just a year to go to law school. There were several reasons. Silicon Valley housing prices were exploding. I wasn’t going to be able to buy one any time soon. Plus, I was skeptical about being a mar-comm or PR professional for life. Apple’s public visibility exceeded its market share, but the PR staff wasn’t driving decisions. They had to defer to the lawyers who advised on what a public company can or must disclose. The PR staff also had to scurry around to put the best possible spin on bad decisions executives had already made. I didn’t like that subordinate status.

Plus, I’d been interested in China for a long time. China’s transformation, like the Internet, was clearly a mega-trend. I decided to convert my China interest into a career direction. I went to Washington University in St. Louis to get a JD and MA in Asian Studies.

I took my PowerBook and Newton to school with me. But in general my IT enthusiasm slipped into the background for several years. I didn’t have time for it as I pursued those degrees then ground my way through a couple of years in a large law firm.

But several key things did happen in my personal technology experience in 2000, the year I graduated and started working as a lawyer in New York. I got my first PC, digital camera and mobile phone that year (I was comparatively late on all these). One reason was that I finally had a salary again. Another was that my wife was pregnant; I of course wanted her to be able to reach me at all times. When the baby came I got a camera, computer and printer. I wanted to take pictures, print them send them to far-flung relatives.

The principal reason I broke with my Mac tradition was that I thought having a PC at home would help me learn to use one at work. The firm was purely a “Wintel” shop. I had always been a go-to guy for technology questions, but in a PC environment I knew I’d be almost useless. I didn’t want to feel unfamiliar with a device I’d use every day.

So I bought a tiny Sony Vaio laptop (the first of many to follow). I think it cost about $2,000.

At the same time I got my first Windows-based PC I also bought my first digital camera. It was a three megapixel Nikon Coolpix 990. It took brilliant photos. I treasure many of the shots I got with it (including the first images of my daughter, pictures of family visiting New York City). Equipped with the new camera and computer, I sent friends and family pictures at the excessive pace typical of smitten parents. I cropped and retouched photos and selected some for layout in album pages that I printed at home. I designed a card to announce my daughter’s birth. However, after my two weeks of paternity leave ended, I had less time to experiment with my new computer and camera.

I bought a Palm device but never integrated it into my life. Compared to my Newton it seemed anemic, and I was mostly chained to my desk or in some conference room going through boxes of documents. If I needed a phone number I could call my secretary.

I didn’t excel at being a corporate law drone. I was happier after the firm moved me from New York to Beijing, but even in China I loathed being a low-level lawyer in a big firm. It just wasn’t the life I wanted.

Next I got a teaching job in the business school of the University of Maryland. They were expanding under the slogan “leaders for the digital economy.” I assume my IT background helped me get the job, along with my China expertise.

As a professor I’ve had more time to play with gadgets. It’s probably fair to say it’s become a fetish. Every day I read tech blogs and other online material about IT. Buying tech magazines eats a surprising amount of my household budget. Then there’s the hardware . . .

In the last 16 months I’ve had nine computers and four different smartphones or PDAs.

That’s grossly excessive—I know, I know. (I couldn’t afford my technology addiction without the vast secondary market for electronics on eBay—selling stuff there substantially mitigates the financial cost of my compulsive gadget buying).

Elsewhere I’ll detail the rationalizations that drove each specific purchase. Basically I was on a terribly expensive and time consuming quest to find a device that would help me write. I am a tenure-track professor at a research university. I have to write for publication to keep my job. I love my job but hate writing the kind of stuff I need to produce to keep my job. I have tired a succession of devices to help punch through my resistance—Pocket PCs, Tablet PCs, conventional laptops, ultra-portable PCs and smartphones.

Unfortunately no gadget can do much to solve writer’s block. It’s a psychological, not technical, issue. But hope springs eternal—I truly thought every device might help me become more productive in terms of formal academic writing. Also, gorging on technology provides great distraction from the stress of what one should be doing.

Another lesson of my quest is that there is no perfect computer. This is a simple and, for most people I imagine, rather obvious point. But I spent a huge amount of time and money coming to appreciate this in a visceral way.

There is no perfect notebook computer for two main reasons.

The solution for me is to have two computers. This is an admittedly extravagant approach. But I find having two quite different devices provides something close to equilibrium. It addresses my alternating dissatisfaction with either single device (or dissatisfaction with a single device that tries to compromise between the best attributes of multiple devices).

I have a big 17″ laptop that serves as a “desktop replacement” (or desktop substitute, since I have no desktop to replace).

Another tiny laptop provides 1) ultra-portability and 2) Tablet PC functionality, two things that are sometimes (but not always) critical to me.

I’m quite happy, at least for now, with my combination of an HP dv8040us and a tiny Fujitsu P1510.

Despite my recent burst of computer and gadget buying madness, I consider myself a second-wave adopter of technology. I tend to be the first among my peers to try some new device or software, but I’m almost never among the first-wave adopters who create or adopt things on the “bleeding edge.”

For example, I started a blog in 2003—far from early, but a bit before “blog” became a common part of the lingua franca.

I started with Blogger, initially hosting my site on Blogspot. Then I moved the blog to a server at the university where I’m employed (because Blogspot, though not Blogger, is blocked in China). Later I tried TypePad. Then I registered my own domain and migrated to WordPress which I’m still happily using.

I’ve had only four digital cameras. I still use two of them—a tiny Pentax Option 5si that fits in my shirt pocket and a bulky Nikon D70s. The Nikon is a digital SLR; it shoots fast enough to let me capture, sometimes, those priceless things my daughter does. I use Picasa to catalog and retouch my shots and create web pages with them. Sometimes I’ve used PhotoStory to make videos (slideshows with fancy transitions and voice-overs), but that is incredibly time consuming if you try to do it well.

Most of my life is now spent online. Most every day I use a computer to handle email, read material on the web and create some content of my own. I bank and increasingly shop online. Living in China I stream NPR over the internet to get my news fix. I download and listen to podcasts with increasing frequency. I still buy lots of books (way too many, actually), but increasingly I find that “dead tree” resources are disappearing from my life. Students often give me research papers written without any visits to a physical library. This isn’t all good, but it’s an inexorable trend.

Once you’ve used a 1) mobile phone 2) laptop computer 3) email account 4) high-speed internet connection 5) digital camera (paired with a computer, color printer and internet connection) and 5) smartphone or other device that lets you handle email and get on the Internet anywhere—you never want to revert to life without those things.