Geek Mystique

Geek Greetings

Dave Andrews

The ever-increasing influence of computer technology on our everyday lives exhibits itself in small but telling ways. One custom that high technology is starting to affect is the exchange of holiday greeting cards. More technology-savvy revelers eschew environmentally unfriendly greeting cards made out of paper and instead send e-mail messages. These e-mailed holiday messages may or may not include a uniform resource locator (URL) pointing the recipient to the sender's Web site.

Things were looking good for the environment when a BYTE editor remarked that he'd received six times as many electronic greeting cards in 1996 as in 1995. Unfortunately, further investigation revealed he received only one electronic holiday card i n 1995, so the 600 percent increase sounds bigger than it real ly is. The final tally of greetings received at work or home:

• Holiday greetings received electronically: 6
• Traditional greeting cards with food: 4
• Traditional greeting cards with clothing: 1
• Traditional greeting cards (stand-alone): 87

Note that work-related e-mail messages that had holiday wishes or sentiments tacked on the end of the message were not counted, as those numbered way up in the hundreds.