It is a truism that we live in an era of electronic communications. Nonetheless, I find myself continually astonished at how pervasive the electronic grapevine has become.Perhaps it is because I am basically conservative. Electronic mail has long come free with UNIX. Even so, I resisted the use of e-mail within Whitesmiths all the years we were tied into the UNIX network. Mail within the company was useful, I felt. But I saw too many hours wasted by people generating, and wading through, gossip on the various forums.
When I went on my own, I quickly noticed the vacuum that comes with being disconnected from the technical community. I gave in, bought the UUMAIL package from Vortex Technology for my PC, and signed up with UUNET to get on the network. My usage has grown exponentially. I once stayed comfortably within the 60 minutes per month that came with my rock bottom base rate. Now I blow that quota by shipping a single book manuscript, or a batch of articles for CUJ. It is a rare week that I don't get mail from four continents.
I tell you this for several reasons. I am beginning to get letters to the editor via e-mail. That is a milestone of sorts, at least for me, and a true sign of the times. It is only fair that I give in a further step and begin advertising my e-mail address on a wider basis. It will stay unchanged even for the year I am spending in Australia, thanks to automatic mail forwarding. Were it not for e-mail and FAX, of course, I couldn't possibly edit a magazine this year that is published in faraway Kansas.
I welcome this growing electronic interconnectivity, albeit reluctantly at times. But I still can't bring myself to read comp.std.c, the electronic forum on standardizing C.
P.J. Plauger
pjp@plauger.uunet.comP.S. I invite our readers to stop by the R&D booths at SD '91 in Santa Clara (February 12-15). Both CUJ and TECH Spec will be exhibiting, so stop by and say hello to our staff. We'd like to hear what you have to say.