How to Look for a Book in the Stone Age

I have written a series of entries, which I call “the Stone Age series.”

Everyday life has been changed drastically by the spread of the Internet, but sometimes I feel that the life with the Internet is so natural, because I forget the life before the Internet. In order to remember how was the life before the Internet, I wrote some entries about it. In these entries, I call the age before the Internet “the Stone Age.”

In the Stone Age, we could survive without the Internet and cell phones. I wrote about the devices that we could use in the Stone Age in the entry “I could survive in the Stone Age.”

In these days, people managed to meet friends with public phones and “real” message boards. If you interested in how they met friends, please read my entry “How to Meet a Friend in the Stone Age.”

Today I’d like to write about a way of looking for a book without amazon.com.

If I were looking for a newly published book, at first I went to a bookstore. Now, in the Iron Age, I can check the stocks in a bookstore with the Internet, but at that time the only thing that I could do was just going to a bookstore. If there were no stocks of the book that I was looking for, I went to another bookstore.

I don’t have to worry that the digital book that I want to read will be out of print, but paper books often became out of print so quickly. In the Stone Age, I had to buy the book that I would read someday as soon as possible, and there were a pile of books on my desk, which I myself didn’t know when I could read.

Paper books are heavy and bulky. It was really hard to bring a shopping bag that was full of books from a bookstore to my house. My room was filled with a lot of books, which I could no longer put together. Sometimes I bought again a book that I had already bought, because I couldn’t find it from a pile of books in my room.

In the Iron Age, I can get a book just with “1-Click” from Amazon.com on my kindle.

The Death of PC

I'm using iMac with Mac OS 10.5 Leopard in my home and Lenovo ThinkPad with Windows XP in my office. As I wrote in the entry "Whydo I buy Apple Products?", basically I'm satisfied with both of iMac and ThinkPad.

It's enough for me just to be able to use a mailer, a browser, and MS-Office (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint). I guess that most PC users are as same as me. This situation hasn't changed since I began to use Windows 95. I can say that there has been no innovation of PC at all for the past seventeen years.

When I touched PC at the beginning, I used PC with MS-DOS 3.1. At that time, I didn't connect PC to the Internet, and mainly I used word processor, 一太郎 (Ichitaro), which was the most popular Japanese word processor, and WordPerfect, and Lotus 123.

After Windows95 was released, the way of using PC was changed dramatically. It became much easier for me, as an ordinary user, to connect PC to the Internet, so a mailer and a browser became must-have items. MS-Office expelled WordPerfect and Lotus123, and I began to use PowerPoint. It was a kind of revolution that changed my office life.

And then, as I wrote, although PC has been improved, nothing innovative happened.

Now I should update OS of my PCs. Some of applications, for example Flash Player and Kindle, don't work on Mac OS 10.5, and the end of service of Windows XP will be April 2014.

I called the customer support of Apple, and we talked about which version I should update to. The latest version is Mac OS 10.8 Mountain Lion, but it is possible that some of old software don't run on the version 10.8, so I decided that I would update to version 10.6. In similar way, my company decided that they would update to not Windows8 but Windows7.

It's too much of a bother for me to update OS, because nothing will change by updating OS. It's just marketing of Apple and Microsoft.

Why do I buy Apple Products?

I'm using an iPod classic, an iMac, an iPhone4S for private use, and a ThinkPad in my office.

I'm not a believer of Apple, and basically I don't care about the brands of IT devices. But now the products of Apple are invading our home.

I had been using MS-DOS and Windows PC for private use and in my office, and I was satisfied with them. My impression of Apple ten years ago was that they were stylish but unreliable. I heard that Mackintosh frozen all the time with a bomb icon.

My first Apple product was the iPod classic. I wanted to bring all of the songs that I bought, and at that time I didn't have any alternative. Although I thought that iPod classic was useful, I didn't like it in particular. But rather I was impressed by iTunes. I put all data of my music CDs into iTunes, so it meant that it was difficult for me escape from iTunes.

When I changed my PC at home, I impulsively decided to buy an iMac, partly because the barrier of migration from Windows to Mac OS has been getting lower. The computer environment, in which I can use a browser and MS-Office, is enough for me, so now I don't care whether it's Windows or Mac OS.

The more I use the iMac, the more I became to like it, because it is really nice to touch. Especially I love the feeling of the Magic Mouse. I can't do without it. Nowadays the specs on PCs are not different so much, so the feel of them are important for me. In this mean iMac is as same as my Mont Blanc's fountain pen, whose touch is really nice.

I also like a ThinkPad because of the touch of the keyboard and the TrackPoint. But unfortunately I guess that ThinkPad will not evolve much more, so I will not buy ThinkPad for personal use.

And then I bought iPhone4S, because I didn't want to abandon iTunes. As I wrote, I don't care about the brands of IT devices, but I find that I have already been taken up by the environment of Apple.

Apple is awesome.

Paperless Environment

At home I use iMac with a wireless keyboard and mouse. There is no cable coiled up like a snake on my desk and I'm satisfied with the simplicity of iMac.

At the office I use ThinkPad. My company gives us three choices of PC, a ThinkPad notebook, a ThinkPad laptop and a Lenovo's desktop PC. I chose a ThinkPad notebook with a high capacity battery.

I always bring it in the office. I stopped printing out documents and I read them on its display at the meetings.

I write a minute of the meeting while we are making a discussion and I send the minute by e-mail just when the meeting ends. Before I began to use my ThinkPad, I wrote the draft of a minute on my "notebook" by my hand, and then I typed it by PC on my desk and sent it by e-mail. Now I can save my time.

I like the feeling of the keyboard and the pointing stick of ThinkPad, but it's too small for me to use it on my desk. When I'm back to my desk, I connected a display, a mouse, and a keyboard to my ThinkPad.

It's very convenient to use two displays. I open a browser on one display and write by MS-Word on another display with reading references on the browser. Before I began to use two displays, I printed out the references and I wrote with reading the paper.

Now I'm considering that I should buy another display at home.

Writing with a Pen or Typing with a Keyboard

Of course I’m typing this journal with a keyboard now, but I like to write with my favorite fountain pen. I love the feeling of touching and sliding the pen point on paper.

I have a simple rule about whether I write with a pen or type with a keyboard. If things that I write can be reused or searched, I’ll type it and input it as data into a PC. If I use them just one time, I’ll write with a pen.

Especially when I develop an idea, I write it on a sheet of white paper with my favorite pen. I write and draw everything more freely with a pen than with a keyboard and a mouse, so I can develop the idea deeper and wider.

When I stayed in the U.S. for three months 20 years ago, I wrote many letters by pen to my wife (at that time she was a girl friend.) I think that I can express my feelings more when I write by hand.

I always bring a small notebook and when I get an idea to write on my weblogs, I write it down as soon as possible. When I write one of the ideas as a journal, I cross it out. ("I love suffering from insomnia!")

Sometimes in order to share the idea, I scan the document written with a pen into a PDF file and send it to my colleagues through e-mails.

On a business meeting I use a white board and write down what we talked about with a pen. And I take a photo of the white board and send it as a minute. I don't have to write the minute after the meeting with a keyboard.

But there is a great problem. My handwriting in both of Japanese and English is so messy that it's difficult (sometimes impossible) to read it. Even I myself couldn’t read it.

On the other hand, when I make a report, I type it on my PC. I can emend the report easily and of course anyone can read it.

Now I think that I’ll make the expression on the Internet a mixture of digital data and handwritings.

Mobile Devices Bring Work into a Private Life

I used to be a workaholic.

At that time I was literally working for twenty-four hours a day. Of course I was working at the office, at my home and even in my dreams. My wife said that I was talking with someone in a business meeting in my sleep.

The day before a business trip I often worked at the office all night long. In the early morning I went to the airport. On my way to the airport I was working with my mobile PC in a train. I took a shower and shaved in a lounge at the airport, and ate a croissant and drank coffee while looking at the display of my mobile PC. I took an airplane and when the airplane started flying level, I opened my mobile PC as soon as possible. When I had time for a business meeting with my clients, I got into a coffee shop to work.

I was completely addicted to my work and I think that I was crazy now. But I couldn't find myself crazy in those days.

After I've suffered from depression, I decided to divide my private life from working time. I changed my mobile PC for work into a desktop PC and stopped bringing a mobile PC. I worked only at my desk in my office, never at home. My company prohibits employees from working on their private PC, so I actually can't work at home without a mobile PC.

My desktop PC got older and too slow to work, so I would change my PC for work. My boss told that you would need to check e-mails out of our company and you should get a mobile PC. I've changed my policy and got a new mobile PC.

On Friday evenings I always can't finish my tasks to be done in the week, so in the end I bring my new mobile PC and work at home in the weekend. I returned back to where I started. To tell the truth I've brought my mobile PC to work this weekend.

I heard from the manager of salesforce.com, which provides cloud services to companies, that he had a blackberry mobile phone, and always checked e-mails and his company's cloud website, and instructed his subordinates to do the same. Since the central office and Japanese branch of saleforce.com have time difference, I think that he can't take a rest all day long.

Mobile devices bring work into a private life. If we don't intentionally resist it, we would be caught in these big waves.

Getting Addicted to the Magic of Mac

Basically I hadn't been particularly concerned about the brand of PC I used. It was enough for me just to be able to use a mailer, a browser, MS-Office and iTunes on PC.

I use a Lenovo desktop PC with Windows XP at my office, just because it's my company's standard PC. I don't especially like Lenovo PC, but I have no complaints about them either. It's just a tool for my work. That's all.

At home, I used to use a home-made PC, for no reason other than it was cheap. Then when I couldn't be bothered putting together another PC for myself, I bought Dell PC again, because it was cheap.

I wasn't particularly enamoured of these either, but nor did I didn't have any complaints about them, either. I was able to check e-mails, view websites and write and upload journals onto my weblog. That was more than enough.

But then the Dell PC started to break down frequently, so I decided to buy a new one. I went to a PC shop and looked around for a PC, but couldn't find the one that I wanted to buy. PCs made by Japanese made PCs were not so simple and had a lot of functions that I would never use. I didn't want to watch TV programs on PC and I didn't need a key to launch a mailer.

I walked around the shop, and I saw an iMac. I hadn't been interested in Macs before, but the iMac looked both cool and simple at that time. So I bought an iMac on impulse, and as a result I pleased with its simplicity.

iMac consists of one body, and I use Wifi, a wireless keyboard and a wireless mouse, so I don't get annoyed by cables anymore. I had no trouble changing over from Windows XP to Mac OS X and I've been able to use a mailer, a browser, MS-Office and iTunes smoothly.

After I began to use iMac, I found myself seduced by the Magic of Mac. The function and performance of an iMac isn't that different from a Windows' PC (at least for me). But I feel good using an iMac. I'm using an Apple Magic Mouse, and it's a great pleasure to stroke it.

In the morning I check e-mails and some websites on my iMac at home, and enjoy the feeling of the mouse. And then I touch the Lenovo's mouse at the office, it feels wrong somehow. Something about it is different from the Apple Magic Mouse. This is the magic of Mac.

Right now I'm using an ordinary cell phone but someday I'll buy a smart phone. I think that an Android smart phone is OK from a functional standpoint. But I'll probably buy an iPhone, because of my growing addiction to the Magic of Mac.