I was bringing home my "luggable" (so called portable computer). That's correct, before the debut of wholesale computers as small as a purse, the luggable computer was an incredible advance. Weighing in at about 30-40 pounds, it was the size of carry-on suitcase. It had a flat black screen that was about the size of a note card attached to the CPU which in turn occupied the bulk the device. The keyboard formed the top of the 'suitcase". It was full size which meant approximately the same thing it does now and it snapped onto the front, affording a carrying strap to cart the big baby around. When you plugged it in, after several minutes, the miniature black screen would light up dimly with dull green lettering and you could type to your heart's content. You had to be somewhat familiar with MS-Dos because that is how you gave certain commands.

Where could you go with it? Well, unlike your wholesale computer notebooks that go with you on plane flights, bicycles and to coffee shops, as a practical matter, you could only take your luggable computer home. Then you would prepare some documents, then haul it back to the office to plug into a mammoth parent computer and start up on your work that way.

Sounds like not much of a helpful creation, correct? But consider, the nearly portable was a huge leap forward from the entire room of tape input that had signaled the commencement of the computer era only a few years before. Take a computer home? That was just unbelievable!

And that was the beginning of the work around the clock mindset that has now descended upon us all. In the old days, before the wholesale computer technological revolution and the other advances in things like cell phone technology and email, netbooks and notebooks, and laptops, you could control approaches to a CEO, a customer, anybody. Then you had excuses readily at hand: "I'll take a look at that when I get to the office "Your letter hasn't arrived in the mail." "I won't be near a phone." "Can you fax?"

In short, then, you were not call all the time. You could not get things done overnight because the tools simply did not allow it. Now, workers are so supremely content with their wholesale computers and other hi tech gadgets, do they recognize it means they have to work and stay in touch each second of every day? Wow, never did I guess my so called portable computer was the start of no breaks, no time off, no intervals.

Progress or a set back?!