Writers beware. Technology is not our friend. It is our mortal enemy, just waiting to beat us when we're down. Oh yes, you might think that with all the pretty toys out there meant to make our jobs and lives more convenient, like digital recorders, digital cameras, blackberries, laptops (the list goes on), we have it made as journalists now. But just wait until things go wrong. Because now when they wrong, they go far more wrong than before we had all these gadgets. We have become slaves to technology, you see.

Why such paranoia? Take as a case in point the recent incident of Colin Mayes' personal e-mail (a joke about the government, a native man and a bull, which incidentally was far more derogatory to the government) gone public. How many of us (and I know my fellow students are hanging their heads in pseudo-shameful agreement) have sent e-mails intended for a very specific audience - with words that could, if seen by the wrong people and out of context - be quite damning to a budding journalist's reputation.

Anyway, the real reason I'm writing about the burden of technology is not because of an issue in the news. It's because of something that happened to me personally: the hard drive on my few-month-old Mac laptop died suddenly one fateful morning. One week before my major feature was due, and in the middle of working on several other assignments. Beyond the obvious stress this created, from simply not having a computer with which to work on my draft, to convincing me that I'm the carrier of some sort of computer death-curse, there was also the stress of losing my files. I backed up some things, but I just didn't do it often enough; hence we get to the reason for this blog. If you rely on your computer the way I do now, remember to back up your data. All of it and as often as possible. When I went to pick up the Mac with a brand new hard drive, more than a week later, there were two other people in the shop in the middle of similar catastrophes. They both depended on their computers to make a living. Avoid loosing your source lists, pictures, all those electronic copies of published work, essays in the works etc...

My friends used to call me the Queen of the Stone Age because I was so technologically inept. Maybe nothing has changed. Probably everyone reading this backs up their stuff once a week or more and I'm the only sucker. So if that's the case, I can at least offer two pieces of advice in the event that your computer dies and as a freelancer you're without your moneymaker. 1. Always have a friend on stand-by who will lend you their computer in the event of an emergency. 2. Failing that, if you have warranty, force your computer company to rent you a computer for the time yours is being repaired. Mac had offered to do this for me when I made it clear how much I depended on the thing. Finally, make a point of communicating how unhappy you are about the incident to the service rep, adding that you will never buy their product again due to this inconvenience. At least you might get a free Ipod or something out of the disaster. Just what you need, more technology.