23/2/99

David's cyber-golem

"Allo, Sam? David. My wife is making kubbe soup. You're coming?"
    Sima Ashkenazi's kubbe soup is worth a cross-town trip. "I'm on my way."
    Between slurps, their daughter, Mor, moans. "Daddy, I need Excel and PowerPrint." Like, what 10-year-old these days doesn't have such a thing?
    David looks at me dumbly. "What's she talking about?"
    The Ashkenazis are caught in a generation gap. Mor finishes her soup and slips off to the computer. Like all Israeli kids, she's a whiz. Her sister Or, nearly nine, patiently waits her turn. Even two-year-old Achva, who only recently learned how to use the toilet, can use the computer, with Comfy, a  keyboard for toddlers.
    David shakes his head slowly, stupefied. In this mad rush to the future, he's been left behind. Like his parents struggling to come to grips with emerging modernity a generation ago, he is too timid to plunge in. "Where do I start?" he asks. "What kind of basis do you need to understand all this?"
    David is an electrician, supplementing his income by operating an ice-cream truck. He's a tactile sort, great with his hands, a supreme fix-it man who'll climb on your roof to repair a solar heater and then descend into the sewer to cure your plumbing problems. But electronics? Incomprehensible. Computers? "The simplest things I don't understand. Like inter. [He means "enter."] They're always doing inter, what's this mean?
“If I took a course I could learn, I suppose..." 
    I ask David what he understands about the Internet.
    "It's some kind of communication thing. I heard two people got married through the Internet. I dunno, people, uh, communicate, somehow, they, uh, connect between here and there, I think, for example, if I want to contact you I send you some kind of a message, and through some kind of number or code or something, this is how I understand it, that's how we connect. And if you want to write a letter, tik-tik-tik, then you print it. Am I right?"
    David is 38 years old. He's intelligent, but straightforward, earthy, unfettered by layers of sophistication. He knows what he knows, likes what he likes, but he's curious and respectful of the world outside his realm. He may appear simple, but he's well-read, even enjoying the classics and philosophy.
    "I look at this computer and I say, David, this is not for you. It rubs against my nature, y'know, some people just aren't right for this kind of thing. I'm a working man, physical things I understand, I'm good at that. Give me a job and I blossom, you know what I mean?
    "I see this as a privilege for the elite, not for someone like me. But now, my daughters are in the elite."
    Neither David nor Sima speak much English -- they have little use for it -- but Or and Mor read The Jerusalem Post's youth newspapers and learn the language with enthusiasm, because they see its value the moment they turn on the computer button. Their lingo is peppered with Bill Gates English: shift, home, MS-DOS, escape, enter, surfing. 
    David watches with fascination as first Mor, then Or, nimbly navigate through various programs. "I like the mouse," he chuckles, "it's davka cute."
    Sima is less mystified by this golem. "I know a bit by now, how to turn it on, and off, to get into a program. I'm with the girls a lot, so I learn, I have to, because when they have a question I have to know."
    They came into a bit of money a year ago and decided what they need most is a computer. 
    "We couldn't just go out and spend 7,000 shekels," says Sima, removing the empty soup bowls and returning with mint tea. "I asked around. And I learned, it should have a Pentium-this, speakers-that, a screen, a keyboard, a mouse, so with this information I shopped around for a good price. I didn't even know how to talk to the salesmen. They could have taken such advantage of me."
David's brow furrows as he asks me, "What we have now, it's a year old, I'm told it's old-fashioned, that I should buy something better. Can't be! Is it true?"
We move to the girls' bedroom, where the furniture has been shuffled to squeeze in the computer system.
    Little fingers skim deftly over the keyboard. David's hands are folded.
    "I haven't lost touch with them, even though, when they're in their world, with the computer, I'm excluded. But they're still part of my world."
    The girls were always able to call upon Daddy to fix things, but now, with this contraption so central to their lives, they find he is helpless. But they don't resent their father's ignorance. "I wouldn't want my daddy to be playing computer games all day, what kind of man is that?" Mor says, and grins. "Anyway, it's better for us. We don't have to share it with him."
    David laughs. "You see, it's better I don't know."
    Or senses she should defend her father further. "But he did sit at the computer once or twice. He played Solitaire. We taught him, and he was good, he did it."
    At one point, the girls encounter a crisis: the printer isn't working. David's only hope is that it's an electrical problem, and he crawls in behind the setup. Sure enough, it takes him a moment, and the printer is humming. "Loose plug," he mumbles modestly, but I'm sure he's just a bit pleased for having answering the call.
    Achva is sitting on Daddy's lap, and croons, "Comfy" -- her special keyboard. Her sister Or reluctantly hops off the chair, and David sets the littlest Ashkenazi on a pillow, and crouches alongside. Achva pecks away at the oversized keys while sucking on her pacifier. A cartoony turtle appears, she says "scary!" and taps a key to make it go away. David's face, illuminated by the computer screen, is awash with pride. "Well done!" 
    David goes back to the kitchen, and lights up a cigarette. "What I understand is this: they need a computer to get ahead. That's the way it is today.
    "When I was a boy, we didn't have a TV. We couldn't afford it. So I used to go to my friend to watch. And my father would come home and ask, 'where's David?' And my mother would say, 'he's over at Moishe's, watching TV.'
    "One day he grew angry and said, 'if a TV is something my boy should have, I'll turn over the world, he'll have a TV!' The next day he went to work, he kicked up a fuss, he said, 'you have to give me a loan, I have to buy my boy a TV! Today!'
    "That very day he came home carrying a television on his back."