dm@bfly-vax.bbn.com@MIT-CCC.UUCP (03/04/87)
------- Forwarded Message
Date: Tue, 3 Mar 87 22:10:41 EST
From: Dan Franklin <dan@prophet.bbn.com>
To: silent-tristero@prophet.bbn.com
Subject: Modern Times (from The Atlantic)
>From the February 1987 issue of the Atlantic comes a plaint by James
Fallows on the electronic age in Malaysia:
... In the old, colonial days the expatriate's lifeline from Malaya was
the Singapore packet ship, bringing tinned biscuits and the weekly
mail. In the "old" pre-computer days it was the Telex machine,
expensive but quick. On arrival in Malaysia I initially relied on the
Telex, scrawling dispatches in big block letters and taking my sheaf
of papers to a downtown office, where I could chat with the Telex
girls. Now I have "advanced" to a more stylish and direct connection.
My new lifeline is MCI Mail, the computer network that in theory
provides a cheap and immediate link to anyone with a computer and a
modem, anywhere in the world. In the U.S. using it was quick and
painless; here the gap between theory and reality threatens to swallow
me up.
Malaysia has a brand-new "public data network," called Maypac, which
in principle allows me to call a number in Kuala Lumpur to be
connected with MCI Mail. But for obscure reasons MCI and Maypac
couldn't make connections during my first two months of trying. My
fallback plan was to attach my modem, brought from America, to my home
phone and, on the days the phone was working, to call MCI's number in
the U.S. But the connection, via satellite, was too fuzzy. To make
matters worse, on my second try the modem blew up when my
240-to-110-volt transformer failed. I tried another modem, bought in
Japan, which ran on batteries and did not explode. This one clamped
onto the rounded telephone handsets that are standard in the U.S. and
Japan. But residential phones in Malaysia are squared off, and the
modem won't fit.
I refused to be denied the convenience of a modern computerized link.
I learned that Singapore has a data network -- and no disagreements
with MCI. From pay phones in Malaysia you can reach Singapore, and
the pay phones have rounded handsets onto which the modem, with some
shoving, will fit. I signed up with the Singapore network. My
preparations were complete.
This is how I now use advanced technology to keep in touch: I leave
home in the morning dragging a big blue canvas sack. In the sack are
the clamp-on modem, a small Radio Shack computer, a modem-to-computer
cable, and eighteen to twenty pounds of Malaysian coins. The coins
are each worth twenty sen, or about eight American cents, and they're
thick and heavy. One of them is good for seven seconds of connection
to Singapore, so I need them in bulk. When my supply gets low, I stop
at Bank Bumiputra Malaysia ("Bank of the Original Sons of the Soil of
Malaysia"), where i can walk in with a 100-ringgit ($40) bill and walk
out an hour later with my coins.
I go to one of Kuala Lumpur's busiest streets and set up shop under
the sign that says TELEFON ... The modem goes on top of the phone; the
coins get piled in big mounds wherever I can find a flat surface. The
ones left over sag in my pants pockets, making me list. I raise my
right knee and brace it against the bottom of the phone, rest the
computer on my now-horizontal right thigh, and connect the cable. I'm
ready to begin. I dial the number in Singapore, wait to hear the
computer tone, and slam the handset down into the modem before the
tone cuts off and my first twenty sen's worth of time expires. Then
comes the hard part: shoveling twenty-sen pieces into the phone every
seven seconds, and digging spares out of my pockets when the mounds
dwindle down, while trying to type the commands necessary to make
contact. "NQJFXPM03106004759" is only the first part of the elaborate
sign-on code. Every four or five minutes the phone's coin box fills
up and I have to break contact, disassemble my equipement, and move to
the next phone in line. I've chosen this location because I don't
know any other with so many phones in a row.
There is a bus stop right by my telephones, and a hangout favored by
off-duty police. To the regulars I have become an institution, a
major spectacle, a dependably hilarious diversion to replace the rock
concerts that Malaysia recently outlawed. As I fumble to keep the
money going into the slot, coins inevitably fall to the ground.
Little children with backpacks, waiting for the bus to school, dart
between my feet, filching twenty-sen pieces and skipping away in glee.
Women in beautiful saris, sober Muslims going to work in the nearby
Tabung Haji ("Fund for Pilgrimages to Mecca"), young toughs on their
loud motorbikes, all laugh openly at the sweaty, red-faced foreigner
doing his Modern Times routine at the phones. The humiliation of the
West is complete. Then the daily inch-a-minute downpour begins, nd I
try to hold an umbrella with my chin.
When I have finished, I carefully repack my equipement, sweep the
remaining coins into the bag, and walk off looking straight ahead,
with as much dignity as I can muster. Tomorrow I will do it all
again.
On my way home I pass the Telex office. Through the window I see my
friends the Telex girls, in their smart tan uniforms, smiling as they
sit at their machines. I am too modern to need the likes of them.
- James Fallows
------- End of Forwarded Message