Forward this to 20 people.
Chris Chu
Last week, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak came to Mount Allison University and gave his audience an insight into the creation of the personal computer. Just how far have we come along since then?
In his days, there were no personal computers. Growing up in California, he was fascinated by electronics and gained a deep understanding of how everything worked together. Using this information, he went and made a machine that businessmen soon cannot be without. As Wozniak recounts on computer literacy, to have a computer back then meant a competitive advantage.
Throughout the ‘80s, DOS was the operating system installed on most people’s personal computers. [tag]Computer literacy[/tag] during this period included the ability to remember a few short commands, know how to navigate a program without a mouse, or even delve into simple batch file programming to automate tasks.
Growing up in Burnaby, my parents didn’t want me to play computer games when I was growing up, so they didn’t get me a computer. I had to look around and ended up with an Apple II (from the ‘70s!) that somebody didn’t want. Since it was 1998, my ancient machine was no longer supported. I got some books from the public library and experimented with different parts of it, and had some fun making my own games and programs. It taught me a lot about math and problem solving, even though by today’s standards we have toasters with more capability than that computer.
I don’t think we’ve moved very far at all since then. In fact, we may even be less computer literate than before. Think about what you do with your computer today:
• Emails;
• instant messaging (such as MSN, AIM, or ICQ);
• [tag]social networking[/tag] (such as Facebook or MySpace); and
• word processing.
Computers are more powerful than ever before, but the general population gets one just for the sake of having one, not because they actually need it as a tool. Most users don’t know how it works, or how to fix it when things go wrong. Computer literacy, as taught in the schools today, means the simple ability to type using a keyboard and click using a mouse.
As university students, what’s our greatest use for this [tag]communications[/tag] tool? Certainly, it shouldn’t be what you drank last night or photos of you in various stages of sobriety.
[tag]TIME magazine[/tag] made a big deal about how “you” are the Person of the Year because of our ability of use the computer to share information. Well, look at it from this [tag]Person of the Year[/tag]’s perspective: we are being honoured for our ability to use computers to pass along webcam videos of lonely people and kids too obsessed with Star Wars.
I’m not suggesting that we go back to pen and paper, but honestly, get off Facebook or MSN and actually have a conversation with people! Welcome to the [tag]anti-social[/tag].
Originally published in The Argosy, January 2007. Read my comments for additional thoughts.
This ClashBang.com article was written by Chris Chu. Tired of privately venting his frustration in vain, Chris decided to share his discontent with the rest of the world.
