Balderdash
Life In Cyberspace
Recently, one of my techno-savvy friends asked me, ”Do you twitter?” I said I certainly wasn’t a bird! Then she asked me if I was on Facebook. I said no, I’ve barely time to answer mails. Then I was told that you come across long lost friends, etc. I certainly don’t want to be sitting at my computer for hours on end. So in a very anti-social fashion, I ignore all the invitations I get to join. Of course, the computer is a good substitute for company, as you almost never will feel lonely as someone out there would have thought of you and sent you a message, or even better, if you are on Skype you can call free of charge and have long conversations with several of your friends at the same time. I must say I get rather paranoid if my computer stubbornly refuses to comply with my requests and shuts down.
Computers at home are being called upon to perform many functions, the most useful is the excuse used by students. In our day we would say the dog ate up our homework by accident just as we were about to leave, but nowadays kids say they worked on something for hours and it just vanished into thin air and just couldn’t be retrieved. Well, everyone knows how temperamental a computer can be, so I guess the teacher has to accept this explanation and the student is off the hook and gets more time for the assignment. Brilliant!
The famous painter Pablo Picasso said of computers, “But they are useless! They can only give you answers.” Well, I suppose if they had humanoid qualities they would have some form of a brain where they would be able to ask questions too, and challenge what you programme into them. The question of whether computers can think is just like the question of whether a submarine can swim. I suppose in a technological way they do perform these functions to a certain extent.
Positive factor
But I find the fact that they can answer almost any question quite a positive factor. I mean, how did I do a perfect roast turkey this Christmas? And how on earth did we get rid of the huge beehive in our hedge? I haven’t tried it for normal relationship problems, but I bet you one could find those answers too! On the other hand, someone said, “Computers have lots of memory but no imagination.” True, but when we make use of their memory, we use our own imaginations and create so many things. It could be a visual, musical or literary work. It was said, “A picture is worth a thousand words, but it takes three thousand times the disc space.” But it’s all worth it, isn’t it? With a click of your mouse, you have access to the most fabulous works of art or breathtaking photography without the bother of having to go to the actual location of the exhibit. You could stroll through the whole world in a day!
I must say I’m quite a duffer where computer jargon is concerned. The other day, the girls and I were on a conference call, and they were discussing someone’s blog. So I said I also read about it, and Dancing Doll says, “Muuuum, do you even know what a blog is?” I said quite indignantly, “Of course I do! It’s that thing where people write things about something, no?” For some reason, they seemed to find that hilarious and spent a good 10 minutes cackling and snorting in a very unrefined way.
I remember I was having problems with this hardware/software thingy at the beginning, until I came across this brilliant statement – “Those parts of the system that you can hit with a hammer (not advised) are called hardware; those programme instructions that you can only curse at are called software.” Good enough explanation for me!
Then there are these two schools of thought – Computers must be female. No one but the creator understands their internal logic. Even the smallest mistakes are stored in long term memory for later retrieval. As soon as you make a commitment to one, half your salary is spent on it. The other view is that computers must be male. As soon as you get one you find out if you waited longer you could have obtained a better model. They have to be turned on to catch their attention. Big power surges knock them out for the rest of the day. Makes you think, doesn’t it?
— Honky Tonk Woman
