I just finished an email exchange with my brother's Blackberry which is currently on a business trip with him.
The conversation was chatty and warm -- like passing notes with Christina Knickerbocker in fourth grade social studies class. It was only when he said it was past bedtime there that it sunk in about his company supplying shock absorbers to the Eifel Tower.
Jim is in a Paris hotel. I'm in my Buffalo living room and it's not costing us a penny more than we were paying anyway to be chatting away.
I'm halfway through the 2.0 edition of "The World is Flat," so am more aware of these moments - as I am the friends and colleagues ( not just in Buffalo, thank you) who seem immune to consideration of the same.
In 2007, there are still otherwise functioning human beings who believe this "technology thing" will eventually go the way of mood rings and pet rocks.
The socialite who said computers would never replace conversation and thus she refused to have one in her home.
The guy who insisted he wasn't going to get an iPod because "I really don't like the new music anyway."
The Southern senior executive who had his secretary print out all his emails so he could read them and dictate response.
And , of course, the letter-to-the-editor zealots who somehow believe that if we click our heels three times and say "there's no place like home" all the manufacturing jobs will return to Lake Erie's shore - with absurdly high wages and no mercury poisoning to the water.
Me, I'd rather click a mouse.
Google tells me when my buddy Carol has a new column in England and then fills my mailbox with the ensuing reaction the next day. When I next see her, it's as if I had been subscribing to the London papers. It's only fitting. She and I met through a blog.
I was at the central library yesterday doing research for a project at work. Anyone who has worked with microfiche can attest to its quirks and foibles. It's a slow, lumbering process which served well when I was a newly minted grad.
Yesterday I grew so frustrated with mismarked citations and scratchy resolution, I logged into the library computer to find other sources.
One click took me to the library version of Ancestry.com , where - in the time it took to locate, load, search and print one reel of microfiche- I found my business answers and set down the path of finding the names of my father's maternal grandparents.
The question was raised this week among my cousins and we were surprised to discover no one had the answer.
Click. Search. There is was. Michal and Maryanna arrived at Ellis Island in 1899 with their four children. Click. By the 1910 census my grandmother was born and her parents now spoke some English. Click. By the 1930 census they were living with my grandparents and THEIR first three children. It reported that my aunts Irene and Jeanette were the first in the family to have formal education. It took 10 minutes research and one minute to send an email to my cousins telling them what I found.
The census showed multiple generations and families sharing houses in neighborhoods with very small houses. Today my two daughters and I share three states.
My Aunt Judy then told me my grandmother's family was so poor and physically challenged that arrangements were made to give my grandmother to a "wealthy" baker when she was born. The deal was made and expensive Christening dress was purchased by her prospective parents, but in the end her mother chose not to surrender her.
I can not fathom making these kinds of choices. Nor the idea that they likely considered choices a luxury item.
My mother responded with an email explaining that her father worked so hard on the loading dock that his hands would crack and bleed. He soaked them in salt water to "toughen them up," she said, and it worked.
My hand's slide easily across the keyboard. It's our multi-family house, we share information, ideas and affection for each other instantly, but maintain our space, privacy and choices.
Their version of globalization was a long ship journey and a lifetime of labor for something better for their children. Their story is a click away and a world apart from our options.
Will my grandchildren smirk at my quaint paper and photo scrapbooks and wonder how we could have possibly gotten by in these times?
"That Grandma," they'll tell their children. "I heard she was an Early Adopter, but I don't see it here."

Copyright 2007 Judi Griggs