Emergent Networks: Buy from a Human

Old geeks have lots of material on stored on floppies: it's a generational thing. The new laptops, however, have no floppy drives but we buy one separately and carry it like our medals from the last war.

My current machine has a 12 inch diagonal screen and a very early Pentium chip. It also has dead batteries, slow boot times, and a 3 Gig FDD that has perhaps 200 meg of empty real estate. It used to be top end but I'm now attached to it more by defiance than for its display value: every line that I write is a one-finger salute to superstition. I acquired the computer several years ago. Its former owner was a locally prominent psychic whose son told her to buy a laptop but she bought the wrong one. How odd. Valerie Morrison couldn't see enough into her own future to buy the right laptop in the first place.

Ten days ago, Dell sent me a flyer that promised a muscular machine attached to a $350 rebate. So, I pushed off the top of my hill onto a snowy slope with my destination inevitable but not acknowledged as I rationalized visiting the their Kiosk in the mall: "I'm just going to look." After all, Social Security starts in April and Dell doesn't want interest until June! The effect is that of getting a free computer six months ahead of schedule. (A minor sin but still a sin and a tingle for me.)

I showed "Bob" the flyer from Dell and placed an order that I could have processed at home. I thanked him for taking my order because I like dealing with a human. He understood. After all, he sold 25 machines that day and has lots of floppies at home.

There's a postscript:

I got nervous when I got home: "What HAVE I done?" and I really wanted the cat to lecture me. I looked for an excuse to cancel the deal, a well-practiced expression of my usual style of ambivalent attachment. (I often want things until I have them. I once offered to buy a used 300ZX but loaded my conditions so that the deal would be impossible for the dealer to accept. I still have the car.)

I checked PC Magazine ratings: the machine that I purchased blindly is their top-rated model (8.2) and has been for a while, beating IBM's nearest entry by a very meaningful 0.2 on a scale of 10. So much for ambivalence.

I returned to the kiosk, thanked Bob again, told him about PC Magazine, and asked him to upgrade the software.

"Can't do. Once the order is submitted you have to deal with the telephone number that I gave you."

Another customer overheard us and collared me. Two guys talking in geek (he also had lots of floppies). He, too, wanted information from a human before buying the same machine that I purchased 18 hours earlier. He bought it.

I still wanted the software upgrade and called the prescribed number. I occupied 3 numbers in 6 minutes: the last two plagued by satellite delays and Indian accents. I then realized that buying from a human was not enough: I wanted to buy from a local human.

Bob turned out to be a lure, a flower, an animation hung from a set of wires that led to a black hole....

JB

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