"Oh, my darling, I'm so glad that you're finally here."
 

Well, my new power cord arrived on Wednesday evening and.... it worked!  So, here I am, plugged in, battery happily charging, tapping on my laptop, enjoying my laplife. As promised, I did use my week without a laptop to reflect on the role of laptop in my life.  Here is what I can up with.  Does your laptop mean the same things to you? 

1. A laptop is just an entry point to the almighty network

Ever since we started going online en masse in the late 90's, computers have become less important as repositories of private information (your documents, photos, software programs) and more important as connection points to the limitless public inform of the Internet (Google Docs, Flickr, Facebook).

My saintly housemate, Michelle, let me use her laptop on Sunday and Monday.  Fortunately, almost all my work is online, either in my Gmail acccount or in Google Docs, so I was still able to work, even without my own personal laptop.  What was important was connecting to the Internet, which I can do for any computer, not the specific information I have on my own.

2. A laptop frees me from being tied to a particular time and place.

I didn't realize this before, but when I use my laptop in class, I am not just taking lecture notes.  I check my e-mail, write blog posts, read Wikipedia articles.  If I don't want to connect to the here and now (a boring lecture) I don't need to. Without my laptop, I got so bored in class on Tuesday that I spent a half hour draw an elaborate picture of an alien, kind of like this but with Shrek ears. It was sad.

Of course, being able to disconnect with the present moment isn't always good.  There's a lot of life out there to live that cannot be done in from of a computer screen.  Nevertheless, I like the choice of being able to engage with what is in front of me in the real world or do something more interesting online. 

Also, thanks to the global nature of the Internet and communication tools like e-mail and Facebook, being constantly online means you are constantly in several realms of reality, connecting with people also in different realms of reality.  So when you are online, you are not in one place which is an alternative to reality, you are in many places that are all alternatives to reality.  (I'm not a sci-fi geek, but I play one on my blog.)

3. A laptop allows me to do more every minute.

The increased productivity argument isn't new but it's still true.  Send e-mail, write, read about politics, news, create graphics - a laptop allows you to do so many things, almost at the same time.  It adds minutes to the day.