Saturday, November 21, 1998

Old e-mail doesn't just die or fade away

Bill Gates, who is surely as rich as some country somewhere, has uttered thousands of words about the blessings of the device that conferred this wealth upon him, the personal computer. It is a great friend of humanity, he has said, a revolutionizing instrument that could ultimately make life better for one and all.

Little did he know that this wonder of wonders might turn around someday and threaten to take back some of what it has given. That's more or less what happened when some of his old e-mail messages were used as evidence by the government in its antitrust trial against the Microsoft chairman. Old e-mail doesn't always die or even fade away. The New York Law Journal, noting two years ago that legally incriminating data is often stored on computers, could not resist quoting the long-ago, crooked mayor of Boston, James Curley, who said, "If you can talk, don't write."

You might also figure that, in this era of privacy-invading PCs, you should be careful about having your picture taken. At least, if you are not buttoned up.

Dr. Laura Schlessinger, the radio and print purveyor of moral advice, might so caution you now that nude photos snapped of her at age 28 have found a home on the Internet. It's utterly reprehensible, of course, that an ex-lover sold them to a porn site and further proof that computers, like other technological marvels, can do harm when ill-used.

The worst or at least most widespread of the PC miseries, however, could be roughly a year away. You've heard, we're sure, about the Y2K problem. When the year 2000 arrives, computers may not compute the double zeroes or at least not compute them with comprehension, meaning banks will foul up your accounts, the government will misplace your Social Security check, the grocery clerk will miscalculate your change, your bus won't show up on time, and the whole computer-dependent world will more or less screech to a halt.

Somehow, we will all probably survive, though finding it a little more difficult to look down our noses at the bad old days when this emblem of modernity, the grand and glorious personal computer, had not yet made its appearance.