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from http://www./deli/homebrew_and_how_the_apple.php 
I’ll never understand how to operate a computer. Nowadays, turning on the machine usually involves no more than flipping a switch and loading in a program. And in place of those undecipherable symbols that trigger long-forgotten fears of fractions, most programs now use English as the means of communication. Many of them also have pick-and-choose menu formats to guide you through available choices. I might break it. You can’t get that rough with a computer simply by typing on it and turning it on or off. Home computers are akin to any store-bought item: they vary in durability according to manufacturer, model, and wear and tear, and they have to be treated with a bit of respect. I have no sympathy for the user who douses his machine with coffee and complains when it prints out Martian dialect. The machine might lose my work. Wiping out a sentence or two is always a possibility, as is destroying everything you’ve entered over the last five years. But you can guard against such losses by watching your delete commands and taking proper care of your floppy disks. Most important is that well-known data processing axiom: “Back it up.” It takes no time at all to copy a program or data from one disk to another, thus assuring yourself of the ability to restore any work that gets lost along the way. I might lose the privacy of my data. If you have the traditional stand-alone system, with no outside machines attached, your data is as safe as it would be on a piece of paper. For added security, don’t let anyone read over your shoulder when you enter your data or password and remove the disk when your session is finished. If your computer is hooked up via modem and telephone line to a friend’s machine, and if you happen to be paranoid about wiretapping, you can invest in encryption hardware or software to encode and decode your communications. As for the suspicion that someone will phone your computer and search through your disk-based data while you sleep, just keep the power turned off; no one has yet found a way to turn on a computer by remote control. Computers have more capability than I need. This is also true of pencils, but how many people worry about not using them to draw works of art or create literary masterpieces? Personal computers range from relatively inexpensive units to quite elaborate affairs and offer a wide array of functions. Chances are, as you and your computer get used to each other, you’ll expand your horizons and purchase software packages that increase your machine’s versatility. Using a computer will lower my status. This illusion circulates among office personnel who are actually afraid of looking silly as they try to master the new technology. If computers are that alien to you, especially if you’re older or set in your ways, a gradual introduction is probably best. Sympathetic private tutoring can prevent loss of face before co-workers and convince you that business computers may enhance your status. I might lose the ability to do things on my own. A computer is not an electrode-studded brain sapper, nor is it a device that turns users into Einsteins. As a tool, the computer simply helps you accomplish your work with maximum efficiency and expands rather than hinders your own capabilities. Erasing typewriter errors by hand, for example, impedes the creative act of writing, whereas correcting text on a personal computer is a pleasure. As for mathematics, is it more productive to hunt for a multiplication error or to be freed to explore new formulas? A computer is mathematical and not for creative types. This view is held by artistes, literary denizens, and just plain folks with a morbid fear of numbers. The good news about computers is that if you don’t want to play with accounting or physics, you can buy a word processing program to help with your writing, a music package to aid in composing, or a knee-slapping outer-space game to match your wits against. GEORGE S. ZARR, JR., Renaissance man and computer professional |
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