20 Minutes About Computing

Computer Life column for February 27, 1999
by
Richard Gordon

Last month, I was supposed to give a twenty-minute after-luncheon talk to a group of senior citizens in Claymont who were, I was told, not computer users and certainly not computer owners. They wanted me to talk generally about "Computing and Computers."

The roads were too icy, so I didn't get my free lunch.

I would have begun by pointing out that computers are stupid, literal-minded boxes. I mean, not even the flashiest, newest system can count past one without human intervention.

At its deepest level, computer technology is based on binary mathematics: instead of counting "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6," computers build a series of "on-or-off" circuits into numbers: "1, 10, 11, 100, 101, 110."

Software makes all the ones and zeroes make sense. For example, each letter of the alphabet, each color displayed on the screen, is really the result of lots of ones and zeroes.

I would have then resorted to a loose analogy.

Most of us drive a car without worrying about how controlled burning of gasoline makes the engine work. Fire is to cars what counting to one is to computers.

Just as you don't need an engineering degree to drive a car, you don't need a degree in computer science to operate a computer. Some people love and tinker with their cars, and some people love their computers as computers. However, a lot of us lead perfectly fulfilled lives thinking that cars and computers are just tools--one for transportation, and the other for a variety of intellectual tasks and amusements.

I would have then talked about two things that computers have done to revolutionize some parts of ordinary people's lives.

First, computers have grown from fancy calculators into tools that use calculations to do a lot of things. By the 1970's, computers excelled at doing simple repetitive things very quickly. I remember a certain perverse joy the first time I wrote a program that used a "loop"--a series of instructions that I keypunched only once but that was repeated every time the computer read a new line of information.

Now, most people using computers are not programmers, but ordinary people trying to do things like send photographs to grandparents, write letters, play games, and find information. But for us to perform these complex tasks, someone at Bill Gates' little outfit or some other software company has had to write a program that allows these ever-faster-counting machines to do an ever-more-complex series of repetitive tasks.

The second thing I would have talked about would have been how digital technology helps us make connections.

Computers and their software let us see connections and relationships between bits of information that we could never have seen before. Think what information your grocery store collects every time your shopping club card and the bar codes on the items you purchase are scanned at the check-out. The store can observe complex patterns in customers' shopping habits and preferences, inventory control, speed of the checkers, and so on.

Finally, I would have talked at length about how computers let us make connections to people all around the world, talking about e-mail, the Web, and the communities that you can build with them.

And to think that it's all built on counting to one.

Tip of the week

Are you 45 years old and still typing your e-mail with only four fingers? Do you have a fourth grader who wants to type reports on the computer?

Go get a typing skills package for your Macintosh or Windows system. Some programs, like Mindscape's "Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing," have full versions available for both platforms. Most have a variety of drills and games to keep even a jaded fourth grader interested.

With everyone typing away on their own or neighbors' computers, spending $15-$40 on typing software will help you keep up with the rest of the world.

Copyright © 1999, The News Journal Company

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