the burning question is...

Somebody gave him a computer to use him in an advertisement. A magazine came by to check if it was actually used, discovered it in the nursery, solely utilized for chess.

When he writes, he types. Once. He writes in corrections in red pen on the typed sheet, and gives it to a woman to retype ("how are we going to beat the japanese if I don't fire Carol and become lean and mean?"). He doesn't fax it to her, he mails it. Instead of buying fifty envelopes at once, as his current wife suggests, he goes to the stationary store somewhere in NY each time he needs to send something. The woman behind the counter, a hindu, has a jewel between her eyes. That alone is worth the trip. So is chatting with people in line.

Then he goes to the post office, where he has a secret passion for the postal clerk. Considering her motley uniform, she goes to great pains to decorate her head and neck area, quite generous of her.

It is a hell of a good time.

We are here on earth to fart around.

It has been an hour, 9pm now, he asks for permission to continue, amply granted, he moves to a blackboard on stage. He draws an X and Y axis, graph of story structure. X is beginning to end of the tale, Y is good fortune to ill fortune. He illustrates several common tales in this format - boy meets girl, Cinderella, man in hole, Kafka's Metamorphosis. All of these have storylines that gesticulate along the good to ill fortune curve.

He observes that primitive stories tend to stay in the middle and follow a straight line. For starters, they're about animals. You can never tell what's a good or bad event.

Then the "greatest masterpiece of English literature" Hamlet. Hamlet is all depressing and deluded, all the way through - a straight line as well. It tells us the truth, we don't know what the good news or the bad news is, that's the masterpiece.

He finishes with Questions and Answers session (I was all set to ask him to sing the 53rd Calypso of Bokonon). Instead he is to ask the only question. Did you ever have a teacher who made you view life better? Tell the person next to you their name, and I'm outta here.

The session breaks, I mention "Howard Rheingold" to no one in particular, and we wander over to the reception, in the college art gallery. There are not so many people, he is not so thronged. A few people ask him to sign books, tell him about local goings-on.

I get close. I am facing Vonnegut. He reeks of nicotine - years of encrusted stale cigarette smoke eminate from his leathery looking skin and his nondescript tan suit. He is stooped a bit, but still tall and aware, very present. Beneath wisps of blackened curly gray hair, bleary reddish eyes set stare out with gaunt intensity.

I counter his humanity quenching conception of computers with my vision - personal empowerment and freedom and truth on the web.

"Body odour's going to come back in style. What's that wonderful smell? Another human being!"

I proposed that the computer could be used to extend family, and truth, the importance of which he mentioned in his speech.

"Those people aren't real."

I countered with a Rheingoldism - "What about the kid dying of lukemia in the hospital who types to people all over the world up until his dying moment? Is that not real?"

"You're sitting in one place when you use those things."

"Same as writing a novel. You don't write your books standing up, moving around."

He's backing away, looking to speak with some of the other folks congregated around him, "it sounds sort of like ham radio, people use that to talk all over the world." And he's absorbed elsewhere. I write in my notebook, underlined, "He's old school."

He drifts into another room, sits down. More autographs and Ian is talking to him. I take pictures of them together. Settle down next to his chair to wait for computer interjection.

Someone affirms his speech, bemoans the sad fate of the printed page.

I counter that reading is little different on a screen or a page. If they suck now, screens will get better. One is not more inherently communicative than the other.

A book is meditation. There's something about that sitting pose with a book in your hands, concentrating, decoding 26 letters, 10 numbers, 8 punctuation marks

I begin my counterpoint - he holds a nicotine-stained gnarled finger in my face - crotchetizing, "hold on! I'm not finished!"

- your blood pressure goes down, you are relaxed.

One could say the same thing about television, couch potatoing is pretty low key. Besides, with a computer, you are creating something. You don't just turn on a computer and let it play, you have to interact with it, make it do the stuff you want. It enables creation and communication.

Some of the old ladies running the thing ask me to move aside and let other people talk - he ignores them and rebutts me - A book is real. You can have it here, in your hands. Computer text is not real, I can't hold it.

What is real? How is any one thing more real than another?

There's a long version

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