Isn’t it marvellous how the kids can zip around a computer (as if it was completely natural)! Half of them can’t even spell but they can bash in a long piece of code and have the screen up and smiling before anyone over fifty can find the blasted ‘on’ button.
I tried out that line yesterday on an old farmer-type visiting from Norfolk. ‘Blast, moi old beauty,’ he was sure to tell me, ‘those noo fangled things al be the death of me’.
Only he didn’t. ‘Rubbish’, he said. ‘I’ve got all the cows on the computer, I run music through the farm buildings on my iPod and the tractors are guided by satellite’.
So much for that. However, it is true that there are few young ‘uns that can’t get something out of a computer. It’s because it seems natural to them. If it’s bust, I’m frightened to try and fix it. If it’s bust, my son will go through various programs and manoeuvres to repair it, even without knowing exactly what he’s doing. It’ll just appear natural to him.
That’s not to say I’ll let him anywhere near mine.
Computers first came useful – as far as I’m concerned – when you could write on screen, add, remove, re-write and store it to continue later. Before I had a PC, I had a kind of typewriter that showed about four words on a small screen on the keyboard. If you were a touch-typer you could, in theory, stop before the mistake got typed clickety-clack, onto the page. Ah… now you just whack it out and then go through what you’ve written a couple of times. Luxury. I know exactly how to do it as well. How to make the letters bigger, italicise, how to save it, print it, or email it. The email feature, and the Internet which comes with it, are other reasons to have a computer. I will usually leave a letter lying around for months before, with a sigh, settling down to answer it. But an email. The moment I receive it there’s an answer zipping back to my correspondent.
I can take and download a picture and I can just about ‘burn something onto a CD but that’s about my lot. I have, essentially, forged a path through the forest and as long as I don’t veer off it, my PC and I are the greatest of friends.
Later (as I return to this article – see earlier paragraph), the doorbell goes and in comes our Spanish computer expert (un nerdo, masculine) to download something and flick through the keys. A young chap, insouciant.
The Internet is a wonderful thing. It’s an infinitely large encyclopaedia or reference work, with beautiful photographs (often of other things than attractively undressed women). There is, in fact, a kind of world dictionary called Wikipedia which is in some 200 languages and which is updated by anyone who feels he is an expert. There is the advantage of the Internet over print reference. ‘Update’. A reference can be improved, changed, added to, re-written or removed in moments. My old ‘cyclopaedia’ at home on a shelf, finished in 1850, is, occasionally, way out of date.
The Internet is, of course, also a way for whackos, creeps, con men and anarchists to amuse themselves, often at our expense. In my email I receive any number of scams and viruses, the first to get my money in some way (spam, phishing and straight-up cons) and the second to damage my computer or even take over control of it. So many of these are floating about that, without some form of control, I can expect about 90% of all of my emails to be ‘malevolent’. The most irritating must be the simple ‘junk mail’ – endless letters offering one of about three things. If I didn’t want Viagra yesterday, or the day before, there’s a pretty good chance that I don’t want it today, either. So, since there can only be a finite number of people patient enough to send out millions of emails daily, with almost no hope of an answer (have you ever sent away money for these offers?) I can only wonder why they are seldom if ever arrested and why they are then not flung into jail for ever – simply because they annoyed so many people for such a long time.
Small snags in a wonderful invention. A marvellous thing my computer. As long as it doesn’t go ‘phooey’ as - this one just did...
