The Secret Life Of A Database Rider. San Francisco Chronicle, May 2, 1994 
© Reva Basch
 
I  am a  woman  who  loves computers. I go for speed and RAM and more disk
space than I can imagine filling. Color and multitasking and hypertext call
to me; CD-ROM whispers my name. I want it all.
 
I'm  not  entranced with the internals, you understand -- the chips and
connectors  and RS-232 ports. My troubleshooting skills consist of checking
to  see if the thing's plugged in. I'm not a programmer, either; I couldn't
write a line of code to save my life.

But  something  happens  when I sit down at the keyboard. I can feel my
powers  extending, my brain-waves amplified, fresh neural pathways spinning
out.  There's  a  bionic  transformation  going  on, something that clearly
involves both my brain and my body, something almost physical.
 
I've  been  bonding, lately, with a PowerBook, my first Mac after years
of  DOS-hood.  It's  like  being  with  a  new  lover.  We often lie in bed
together; I stroke its trackball with my thumb, I admire its display.
 
There  are  all sorts of preferences to explore, intriguing new ways of
being together.
 
When we're apart, I fantasize about what we might try next time; I pick
up toys for us to play with.
 
I  have  no idea how this happened. The computer thing took me entirely
by  surprise.  In college, I studied the minor metaphysical poets, the ones
we  English  majors called underDonne. Even unto library school, I resisted
technology;  I  stayed  away  from Online Bibliographic Retrieval (wouldn't
you?),  and  opted  for  all the courses in Children's Lit. I could find. I
wanted to put as much distance as I could between myself and computers.

And now, as the saying goes, I are one.
 
Computers let you play God; let's be candid about it. You can define your
own  universe  in a way that goes way beyond setting your screen colors and
giving your icons cute names.
 
The  magic  word  for me is connectivity, using the machine as a way of
hooking  up,  via  modem and phone lines, with other people, with ideas and
information  from online databases and conferencing systems, with the whole
pulsating mass of whatever-it-is-out-there.
 
To me, a computer without a modem is a pitiful, mute thing, destined to
live  out its life running spreadsheets and processing words. Throw a sheet
over it; it's furniture.
 
My  main gig is database searching -- that dreaded Online Bibliographic
Retrieval  of  my library school days, only pumped up and buffed out by the
amazing array of information you can get these days in electronic form.
 
Depending on my mood and who's listening, I call myself an info-surfer, a
database rider (I like the Beatles echo there), a cybrarian. I comb through
the computerized versions of magazines and newspapers, medical journals and
cool  technical  proceedings  like  the ``23rd Annual Bulgarian Congress on
Electrochemistry,''  looking  for whatever my clients think is worth paying
money  to  find  --  the designer coffee bean market, Retin-A as a cure for
baldness,  whether Bill Gates is richer than Warren Buffett, whether Warren
Buffett  is  related to Jimmy Buffett, and what's Jimmy Buffett doing these
days, anyway?
 
The  way the online search-and-retrieval business works, in fact, I get
a certain perverse satisfaction out of knowing that someone who's searching
this  newspaper  for detailed stories on Warren Buffett (or Jimmy, for that
matter)  will pull up this very column on the strength of those passing and
entirely gratuitous mentions. Gotcha, colleague.
 
Just me and my mechanical groom, playing a joke on some strangers.
---------------------------- 
   Reva Basch is the author of ``Secrets of the Super Searchers''