Take my computer, please - On My Mind - Column

Home Office Computing, March, 1995 by Mel Grayson

WHEN FRIENDS OR CLIENTS VISIT MY OFFICE FOR THE first time--I run a public relations business from my home--they're puzzled. "Where's the computer?" their eyes seem to ask. On my desk are a typewriter, some pencils, and a notepad. Lining the walls are books, thousands of them, mostly classics and reference works. No computer.

A few words here about my business. I produce an occasional annual report and press release, but the bulk of my output is speeches for chief executives of very large corporations. That's what I do, and for years people have been telling me I'd do it better and easier if I had a computer.

"Look at the time you'd save," a neighbor remarked. "When you want to make a change in a speech, you'd type it on the keyboard and the computer would do the rest. You wouldn't have to rewrite everything from top to bottom."

He was absolutely correct, and that's one reason I don't have a computer. I want to rewrite everything from top to bottom. Not once or twice, but as many as 10 or 15 times. Over and over again, from word one to sign-off.

Why? Because each time I rewrite something totally, I improve it totally. I tighten it. I polish it. I energize it with new thoughts, new approaches, sometimes an entirely new direction. None of this would be possible if I were to limit my rewrites to a sentence or two.

I hate to appear smug, but there's a word for what I do. It's called writing. There are two words for what the computer-equipped authors do. It's called avoiding writing.

Although my writing methods aren't uniquely mine, they're far from commonplace. I once attended a luncheon at which the speaker was a man who had written dozens of books and who said he and all of his writer friends relied on computers. I can't recall his name or those of his friends, and I regard this as significant because I have no trouble recalling the names of William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, and a thousand other writers who didn't rely on computers.

And finally, I would like to point out the paramount disadvantage of computers in a business such as mine, which is their emphasis on screens as opposed to paper. I happen to like paper. I depend on paper. On paper, words can be touched and reviewed and crossed out and put back in and, what's most important, read over and over again in their entirety. You can hold the complete prose package in your hands, to be pored over at will,

Ever wonder why today's newspapers are dull, repetitive, and replete with errors? It's because of computers. I had this confirmed the other day when I dropped in on a friend who, in the early 1950s, labored alongside me on the rewrite desk of the New York Herald Tribune. He's doing much the same thing these days but for a smaller and more pressure-free newspaper.

"How are you handling the change?" I asked him, pointing to the blinking screen on his desk. At the Trib, everybody had typewriters. "I'm not," he said. "It's handling me. The kids here say the problem is my age. I can't adjust. But I know better. I know how it used to be, and I tell you these damn gadgets have done more to screw up newspapers than all of the journalism schools put together. And I'm not talking only about stories that are mangled or lost because of computer failures. I'm talking about this crazy notion that you can write good copy on a juiced-up TV set."

He and I know the magic of paper and so, curiously enough, do the manufacturers of computers. Why else would they include a printed instruction manual with each piece of hardware designed to usher in a paperless society?

But don't infer from all this that I'm anticomputer. Only a fool would deny the essential place of computers in this increasingly complex world. The problem lies in the assumption that, because computers are ideal for many tasks, they are ideal for all tasks. They aren't, any more than the F-117 Stealth fighter, which performs so admirably in shooting down enemy aircraft, is also good for shooting ducks.

In searching for an analogy that would sum up my view on computers, I found myself likening them to the shots people get for rabies. If you actually have rabies, the shots can save your life. If you don't have rabies, all they do is waste time and money and cause unnecessary pain. In brief, computers are invaluable if you need them, and a counterproductive mischief maker if you don't.

And I don't.

Mel Grayson runs a public relations firm from his home in New Jersey.