Lars Egelands blogg

Changes in my daily life the last years:

–        I got a mobile phone. At first I used it very seldom, no I can’t go anywhere without it, and I also expect to be able to reach everyone else. First I always took the phone, now I can let it ring and ring back later. First I asked people to leave a message at my answering machine, now I ask them to send me a SMS.

–        I used to have an ordinary wired telephone and a modem for my computer at home. Now I have an IP-telephone and a wireless LAN in my house. At home I have a laptop that is connected to the net all the time.

–        Instead of writing postcards when I am on holyday, I send SMS or MMS.

–        I use my phone also for checking the weather, reading news etc. When I am waiting for my train to go home, I read the newspaper on my phone.

–        I have got a mobile office-connection to my laptop. That means that I am not dependent on an available wireless LAN, I can get admission to internet via the mobile net. Via a VPN-connection I can log on to the server of OuC and use Last year I attended the IFLA conference in Quebec. After the conference I took 14 days Holyday in Canada, and went into the Canadian outback. There I was sitting attached to the OuCs systems for economy and the internal archive system. I am independent of space for most of my administrative tasks, except one important thing: Communication face to face with my colleagues.

–        I hardly send or receive snail-mail any more – only emails. But the amount of emails has grown some immensely that it is hard to reach over all of them. Therefore people often send an SMS telling me that they have send me an email which I have to respond to.

–        I only take digital photos and I have digitized all my old photo albums. Everything is stored on an external hard disk.  This spring I visited some relatives that I do not see very often. I brought my external hard disk which really stores the whole history of my family.

–        I have not been in a Travel Agency for many years. Instead I use the net for buying tickets and booking hotels.

–        All my music CDs is stored on my computer and on my IPOD. I have bought a new record player that makes it possible for me to digitize all my old vinyl records. I hardly buy CDs any more, only MP3-files. When I have been to a concert or heard a song I like in the radio, very often I go immediately to ITunes-store to buy the song I like. I have a small week-end house in the forest, when I go there I bring my IPOD and connect it to the radio there. At home I have given away my CD-player; I only use my computer for music.

–        I have an account at Facebook and 400 friends – a mix of colleagues, family, friends and people with the same political view as mine. It can be a time-thief, but it is also a great tool to connect with many people. This winter I arranged a solidarity concert for Gaza in my town. Via Facebook we could reach a lot of people. Before the concert we had name and picture of more than 400 people who had said that they would attend the concert.

–        But some things never seem to change: As I was going home today, the train had a delay. When it came, all seats were taken. But still I find it fascinating that I could sit on the floor in the train writing this blog-post and send it to the net.

The photo is taken by a friend of mine with his mobile phone.