Staying out of the loop while China takes over

[VeriSexy]

Before I tell you about my own Great Leap Forward, consider China's next one.

When I heard the Chinese were seriously thinking about buying Unocal, the ninth-biggest American oil company, I wasn't surprised.

First they would take over the computers, and then they would take over everything else. And they closed out 2004 by taking over the computers. They pretty well already had, since most of the PCs in the West were manufactured there anyway, but their out-front acquisition of the granddaddy of all brand names, the desktop and notebook division of IBM, shocked the pants off everybody who thought the Sleeping Giant, while maybe it wasn't exactly sleeping any more, was still lying in bed wondering how to spend its day.

We'd had hints in Canada that something was stirring, but the general response was bemusement: To think that China might bid for Husky Oil or Noranda seemed absurd ? what did a bunch of Communists know about the founts and fundaments of capitalism? On the other hand, the tar sands have been Tomorrow's Resource for 50 years; maybe the Chinese were the ones who could finally get something worthwhile out of the stubborn gunk. There are enough of them. They could squeeze it by hand, a drop at a time, and flood the market.

IBM, once a giant itself, had drifted off so far nobody could tell whether it was sleeping, or in a coma, or dead. Its celebrated motto was ``Think,'' but somewhere along the line it forgot how.

Actually it had never really embraced the concept. It had rocketed to pre-eminence with a workforce that looked the same, dressed the same, and thought along the same rigidly prescribed company lines. Peter De Vries wrote a wonderful story about going to work for Big Blue. On his first day, he looked at the framed ``Think'' on the wall, took it at its word, propped his feet on his desk, clasped his hands behind his head, and stared at the ceiling.

His boss stormed in. ``What the hell are you doing?''

``Thinking,'' said De Vries.

``That's not allowed around here,'' roared the boss. ``Don't ever let me catch you doing it again.''

But let's leave the Next New World Order (Fortress America hardly has to be conquered when it can be bought outright with U.S. dollars, and China has a whole lot more of them to spend than the U.S. does) to work itself out. What I've worked out ? my Great Leap Forward ? is liberation from the slavery IBM and its competitors and clones have inflicted on us.

It's this: I no longer feel any more compulsion to answer email than I did the kind of mail that used to come with stamps on it.

George Bain's First Law of Civility stated that a letter you really ought to answer will, if left on your desk for three days, become invisible. Well, glory be! The same happens to emails left unread in your inbox (for one thing, after three days they've disappeared below the bottom of the frame).

This infuriates people. They can't imagine such a thing, and if they haven't received a response in seven minutes they phone to complain. Hah! Your phone's caller I.D. window will inform you that it's the same person who just emailed you calling to give you hell for not replying to their email. Here's what you do: Answer in a foreign language. It doesn't matter which foreign language as long as ? this is important ? it's one you don't speak.

If it turns out they happen to speak it, and they call you six kinds of dingus in whatever it is, what's it to you? You won't have a clue what they're saying.

Staying out of the loop isn't easy in the Information Age. It takes real dedication. I don't expect China's rise as a computer power will change that.

Consumer Advisory: If you're using Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator as Web browsers, catastrophe beckons. There are new generations of weird invaders ? spyware and the like ? that can turn your whole operating system to cheese. Wise surfers are switching to Mozilla Firefox. Cheap (it's free), easy and safe from all alarm. It only takes a couple of minutes to download from http://www.mozilla.org. All your ``Bookmarks'' or ``Favourites'' are automatically transferred. If you don't like it, your old browser remains on your desktop and you can switch back.

Let me know what you think at [email protected].

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Con...d=970599119419