Autobiography of a copier

Hi there, my name is Canon. Yes with a single 'n' instead of double. Despite the connotation of power that comes from my name, my day to day job is copying. I work in a small office in a city called Mountain View in California which I'm told belongs to a mighty big country called the United States of America. It must really be a mighty big country since I am never turned off (no pun!) and I need to always be ready to go in case of any time-space-altering copying emergencies. But I've developed skills over time to go into hibernation and sleep so I do ok.

My job is a thankless one. I always feel cheated. People just come in, feed me something, punch some keys. I do my job. They walk away carrying with them even the stuff they fed me. Sometimes they open my trays and stuff reams of paper in it. I keep these for later use and I have quietly observed that I lose some with every job. I do get to read a lot of interesting and supposedly confidential information. One of these days I'm just going to hang on to some and email it to my friends!

The only time people think twice about me is when I do something wrong. I confess sometimes I play some pranks by jamming their paper in my rollers mainly because I'm bored. But by and large, anything that goes wrong with me is generally a result of sheer neglect on part of the people. I suppose these people are weird that way. The other day my friend Ricoh was telling me similar stories. He is into faxing which to me sounds pretty perverted ... but he's a friend - I let it slide.

Another problem about being me is that I hardly get to do any original work. Any creativity on my part invites screams, curses and sometimes kicks. I hear the latest management buzz touts a lot about job rotation and developing new skills. I haven't done any of this renewal stuff for as long as I can remember. I copied when I was young. Now I'm what I'd best call the middle age and I still copy for a living! The next job I'm going to look for, I'm going to push for something new ....

Sometimes I think it's all all right at the end of the day if you at least get proper recognition. What's recognition for a darn copier, you ask? Well, honestly, I haven't thought about that much. But I suppose an occasional loving glance may help. Or at least some petting at the end of a job. Not only do I never get any of these, and - here's the part that is truly hurtful - people often forget my name and call me Xerox.

Small is Beautiful

These are excerpts from E.F.Schumacher's Small is Beautiful that I came across once before but this time it makes far more sense to me.

In Small Is Beautiful, the issues he addresses are big. For instance

"Modern man does not experience himself as a part of nature but as an outside force destined to dominate and conquer it. He even talks of a battle with nature, forgetting that, if he won the battle, he would find himself on the losing side. Until quite recently, the battle seemed to go well enough to give him the illusion of unlimited powers, but not so well as to bring the possibility of total victory into view. This has now come into view, and many people, albeit only a minority, are beginning to realise what this means for the continued existence of humanity."

"In short, we can say today that man is far too clever to be able to survive without wisdom. No one is really working for peace unless he is working primarily for the restoration of wisdom."

"The cultivation and expansion of needs is the antithesis of wisdom. It is also the antithesis of freedom and peace. Every increase of needs tends to increase one's dependence on outside forces over which one cannot have control, and therefore increases existential fear. Only by a reduction of needs can one promote a genuine reduction in those tensions which are the ultimate causes of strife and war."

"There is wisdom in smallness if only on account of the smallness and patchiness of human knowledge, which relies on experiment far more than on understanding. The greatest danger invariably arises from the ruthless application, on a vast scale, of partial knowledge such as we are currently witnessing in the application of nuclear energy, of the new chemistry in agriculture, of transportation technology, and countless other things."

Anyone who is familiar with the Eastern thinking, culture, traditions even religion can see that however odd it may seem, the West has a lot to learn from the East ...

Path with a heart

I came across this today and thought it is very insightful.

From Carlos Casteneda's The Teachings of don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge:

Anything is one of a million paths. Therefore you must always keep in mind that a path is only a path; if you felt you should not follow it, you must not stay with it under any conditions. To have such clarity you must lead a disciplined life. Only then will you know that any path is only a path, and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you to do. But your decision to keep on the path or to leave it must be free from fear or ambition. I warn you. Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself and yourself alone, one question. This question is one that only a very old man asks. My benefactor told me about it once when I was young, and my blood was too vigorous for me to understand it. Now I do understand it. I will tell you what it is. Does this path have a heart? All paths are the same: they lead nowhere. They are path going through the bush or into the bush... In my own life I could say I have traversed long, long paths, but I an not anywhere. My benefactor's question has meaning now. Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't it is of no use. Both paths lead nowhere; but one has a heart, the other doesn't. One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will make you curse your life. One makes you strong; the other weakens you.

True Joy in Life

I came across these words from George Bernard Shaw and I think they are very poignant:

This is the true joy of life ... being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as the mighty one ... being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy .... I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live it is a privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die. For the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It's a sort of splendid torch which I've got to hold up for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to the future generations.


It has taken me nearly half my life to fully realize the fact that I have to contribute to my environment and do so by adapting to it rather than expecting my environment to adapt to me! Anyways better late than never I say .... hope I too can make a difference for having lived.

Future Airline Travel

Judging by the rising costs of fuel and the ever-decreasing space in economy sections of flights, some friends and I were discussing some possible innovations in air travel. Warning: this is in reality just some flights of fancy. Not to be taken seriously!

How about making all passengers unconscious (or futuristically speaking cryogenically freezing them a la Dr. Evil) and fitting them in body size boxes and shipping them as cargo? It solves several problems at once:

From passengers point of view:

1. Instead of your legs killing you for 20 hours in 6 inches of legroom, you can sleep blissfully unaware of what is happening.
2. You arrive all refreshed at your destination.
3. In the event of a crash, this is a life saver (no pun :-0).

From airlines point of view:

1. No cost of nuts, pretzels and any other crap they serve today. No stewards and stewardesses!
2. Fit even more passengers to a flight! Maybe like a 1000.

From safety/government point of view:

1. Completely eliminates the risk of hijacking!

Of course, given the baggage handling skills of most airlines, there might be a minor problem of waking up and finding yourself in the middle of Africa!