If I wanted to send a document to Betty in the editor's office, I rolled the paper up, wrapped it with a rubber band, slipped it into a plastic cylinder and slotted it into the proper tube of our pneumatic delivery system. Close the hatch, press the button and wait for the satisfying Foomp! -- audible proof of compressed air whisking the message away. You could see it go, too, faster than fast, at least faster than you could run downstairs.And when a canister came for you, it landed with a Donk! sound -- a surprise that could jangle your nerves if you weren't expecting it or hadn't gotten used to the system. The system made you always be ready for an air delivery. Like a person in a city under siege, you could never totally relax; even while you were napping, a few brain cells stood watch -- a flying bomb could land anytime.
And when one came, you opened the hatch, popped the cylinder cover and reached inside with a couple fingers to slide the document out. The rolled paper usually expanded from the jiggles of the journey, thus the edges of the paper would scrunch on the lip and the rubber band would roll off in a tangle at the bottom of the canister.
Times change, business methods develop. I adjust to them, but I keep a link with my own institutional past, a practice that anthropologists say makes a human being feel connected, part of a community, which in turns makes him or her healthier and more productive. One such trick of mine was to ask the IT technician to name our mainframe server Betty, after that rosy-cheeked editor of 1966.
Of course, nostalgia can play tricks on your mind, for I'd forgotten that Betty wasn't really very nice, had forgotten how she'd fired Jake, the inept photographer, by pneumatic message. I'd forgotten how we all wondered why, if she was the editor, she had her office one floor below the newsroom. Betty was not shy, told us outright that she didn't like to see reporters, only to read them.
Imagine you have worked as an obedient office drone for 43 years and wake up one day to learn that the management has changed, that you're being fired by a computer robot. I got my first hint when I wanted the documentation on an investigation from last year. This is what the system said to me: The file you have requested no longer exists. That was ridiculous, so I tried another route. The system answered: error message 80010105: Server threw an exception --What, is that like a fit? The server threw a fit?
I'm a diehard reporter, nothing stops me, so I gave up to think about it a while. An evil grin lit my face as I found a solution: I would take the information straight from the source. I whipped out my tiny memory stick and reached round the edge of my computer to insert it and clear it before assaulting the mainframe. But I couldn't do it; someone had stuck putty in the USB port, had erected a physical barrier to data theft. So, we're not completely computerized after all. I looked at my co-workers -- all blankly staring at monitors.
It's one thing to be insulted electronically, but actually coming to my desk and messing with my laptop? Too far. I tapped in the code for the intra-office mail system and got slapped: this password has been deleted; if you feel this message is in error, contact the system administrator.
What is this, a Fellini film? I said this out loud, and right away these words flashed on my screen: Screenwriter Tullio Pinelli said of his first meeting with Federico Fellini, with whom he collaborated on many films: “We were fantasizing about a screenplay that would be the exact opposite of what was fashionable then: the story of a very shy and modest office worker, who discovers he can fly, so he flaps his arms and escapes out the window.”
