YOU’RE INFECTED
January 6, 2011

I watched my life slip away recently: my computer crashed.

The checking account. All my pictures. And the voiceover demos I worked hard (and paid a lot of money!) to create. The priceless article in the New Yorker about how so many people (including me) can’t sleep. The loss was enormous and instantaneous. It literally made my heart blast against my chest.

And it made me feel insanely vulnerable. How could I have let this much stuff reside in a box that can just, well, go
down? Why didn’t I see it coming?

And what’s with all these electronically transmitted diseases, (yes, I know the word is viruses) anyway? How does this work: there’s some kid, in some far flung part of the world, who’s got nothing better to do than to write programs that’ll corrupt MY programs – as well as insuring that my programs go on to corrupt those of all my friends?

And finally: why is it that I, who am somewhat digitally insular, can get zapped with the nasty while my sons, who have, if not totally unprotected intercourse with the online world (we have some spyware after all), certainly enter it with abandon — putting their most intimate personal conversations on Facebook, checking out every outrageous ad they see, answering every crazy quiz — have thus far gone unscathed???

These things are on my mind as I begin to blog.

Here’s the link to that sleeplessness article in the New Yorker.

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2008/06/02/080602sh_shouts_allen

And while I’m at it: another of my absolute favorites – on innovation.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/12/080512fa_fact_gladwell

I’m all backed up now (so to speak) onto an external hard drive. So those miserable little germ mongers can knock themselves out.

And finally, check out this video. Hilarious. Horrific. And really hits home.

http://www.voiceoveruniverse.com/video/ahaarrrr-written-by-and

At the networks we used to call this being pecked to death by ducks. Go faster,
sound slower! We live to serve….