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Don’t reinvent the wheelbook

An old cartoon by “Broadside” creator Jeff Bacon — showing some poor skipper having to relinquish his beloved wheelbook — recently inspired a bunch of bloggers to rant about picking the right tech at the right time.

I’ve been a bit skeptical of the fetish over the years of issuing — not to me, of course — a personal digital assistant to everybody. Personally, as an early-adopter type, I already have some kind of flashy expensive geek toy jammed into my pocket.

However, the messianic zeal of some of the issuers makes it hard to complain that they’re paying way too much for last year’s problem gadget with a 10-year service contract. Or that they just spent a lot of money for a gadget with no training — again. Or that they just issued an expensive device to people who work in a space that doesn’t allow it.

Plus, I get snarled at when I mention that sometimes decisions about gadgets shouldn’t be made by folks who still get their e-mail printed out and have VCRs that still flash “12:00.”

My engineer friend was ahead of the curve on this stuff and bought a shiny PDA for his Bat Belt. He also lost three PDAs in a row, dropping each into the bilge.

The key isn’t getting the newest tech to gather dust on someone’s desk; it’s getting the right tech to the right people in time for those folks to be able to do something significantly more useful than they would with the tech they have right now. So, since everyone knows how cool the new gadgets might be, I’ll print these observations I left in the comments in one blog and reprinted in another:

•You don’t have to reboot a wheelbook.

•If a wheelbook falls in the water, you can retrieve the unsaved data.

•Wheelbooks are protected from electromagnetic pulses.

•If a wheelbook gets a virus, you just wipe it off and smack the guy who coughed on it.

•Wheelbooks are backwards compatible. Upgrades are simpler than drag and drop. They work with a Mac and the work machine.

•In the event of a loss of power, your wheelbook is still perfectly useable.

•Wheelbooks don’t accidentally send photos of the XO in a bathing suit to 500 of your closest friends.

•If it’s 10 seconds to live fire and the wheelbook is jostled and lands on the deck, you just pick it up and keep going.

•Wheelbooks do not require Wheelbook IT admins, nor endless rules about what background can be put on the wheelbook.

•[This bullet wasn’t approved by some staff office. If I had written this bullet in a wheelbook instead of on a computer, I would be OK!]

•Personal choice in wheelbooks is not prohibited.

•Someone else’s personal choice in wheelbook will not cause your wheelbook to lose all the writing on the pages.

So, yeah, keep a CrackBerry and have everyone look at you when your butt buzzes in every meeting if that’s your thing, but remember to use the right tool at the right time.

And if you’re a Defense Department official thinking of buying tens of thousands of PDAs instead of another submarine, please step away from my tax money until you talk it over with people who know what they’re doing.

The writer, an active-duty lieutenant commander, is some staff guy doing PowerPoint in a cubicle. He would love to use his Treo at work, but it’s banned from the building. His e-mail address is chapomatic@gmail.com.