Wei: Dad says I can get a cheap plan. Here is the one I like.
| SOUTHERN PHONE · Student Plan |
|---|
| 299 a month · 12 months, paid in advance |
| Data: 10 GB, then slow |
| Free calls inside the same company |
| Leave early: pay 500 |
Ann: Ten GB is not much if you download films.
Wei: I only use the Internet at home for that. Outside I just send messages.
Ann: Then it is probably fine. Let us meet at the shop; that would be the wise way. But look at the last line before you sign.
Open 12:30 to 13:10 and after school until 17:00
Work saved on a machine is cleaned off every Friday night. Students lose work this way every term, and nothing can be done about it later. Save twice: once here and once on an independent machine of your own. Lost work is a small bomb in a busy week.
Games are allowed after school but not at lunch time. If every machine is in use at lunch, students who are doing school work have the first right to a seat, and a student playing a game must give it up.
Dear Sir,
I cannot enter my page. On Tuesday I changed my phone, and now the system sends the number to my old number, which no longer works.
I have tried the help page four times. Each time it asks me to prove who I am by entering the number I cannot receive. I understand why the system is built this way, but it means there is no door at all for somebody in my position.
My page name is my own name and number and I have used it for six years. I can answer any question about it, and I still have the first message I ever sent. Is there a person I can speak to?
A student of Sun Hill
Fifty years ago, in one European country as in ours, a computer sat in a room of its own and people went to it. Today we carry one, and it goes to every place we go.
This changed something nobody planned. When a machine waits in a room, there are hours when you are simply not near it. Those hours are gone now. A question that used to wait until Monday is answered at eleven on Saturday night, and the person who answers it is not paid for that hour.
The machines did not ask for this. We have not yet made the new rules that a machine in every pocket needs. Every tool before this one got such rules in the end; this one is simply too young, and we are writing them now, badly, one family at a time.