Text 21282, 92 rader
Skriven 2006-09-21 16:21:00 av CHARLES ANGELICH (1:123/140)
     Kommentar till en text av ALAN ZISMAN
Ärende: MS tightens the Noose
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123ecc1469ad
win95



Hello Alan - 

--8<--cut 

RF>> I've been somewhat surprised to find that many college
RF>> students, most of whom have been exposed to computers in
RF>> their educational curriculum for some time, seem to fit
RF>> this "toaster mentality" profile. 

AZ> I'm not at all surprised... familiarity doesn't breed
AZ> interest in getting under the hood-- quite the opposite; it
AZ> leads to taking a technology for granted. 

AZ> My father was born in 1911... he was a radio and car
AZ> tinkerer, since both were technologies that were up and
AZ> coming when he was young. By the time I was growing up, he
AZ> was tinkering with TVs- fixing them for neighbours, and
AZ> always having a bunch of disassembled sets in the basement
AZ> or garage. 

AZ> I took those technologies for granted and had little
AZ> interest in them, beyond what I needed to know to keep my
AZ> car running relatively smoothly. 

AZ> As TVs, radios, and cars started being built around
AZ> integrated circuits, my father lost interest-- these
AZ> technologies were becoming more of a 'black box' to him,
AZ> and were less amenable to his sort of hacking. And the
AZ> skills he had learned were no longer as applicable, and he
AZ> was less interested in learning whole new skill sets. 

I am always reminded of when Richard Burton in a hollywood
version of Faustus when he pushed the books onto the floor and
said he had had his fill of books (thinking he knew all there
was to know). I noticed some years ago that I had had my fill
of books and re-learning what I had previously learned just
because some kid decided to add a few new things (i.e.
re-learning 'C' as 'C++', new versions of Perl, etc.).
Re-learning about surface mount technology isn't learning
something 'new' it's learning about something repackaged but
not really NEW. 

So-called 'new' versions of Windows are much the same. Not
really new just repackaged so that you cannot readily locate
parts of it that you _used_ to find quite easilly. 

AZ> At about the same time, I started doing the same sorts of
AZ> things with personal computers that he had done with radios
AZ> and TVs.... playing with them for the fun of it,
AZ> repairing/rebuilding them for friends and neighbours,
AZ> having a garage filled with disassembled computers, etc. 

AZ> Being surrounded by computers, my children take them for
AZ> granted. 

I kept my computers in the living room beginning with an Apple
II+ so that my children would view them as an everyday object
and not be intimidated by them the way most people were at that
time. There are many people alive today who become violently
angry if forced to sit at a computer and use it. I ran across
this problem when I worked for the Michigan Unemployment
offices to help applicants put their work-history into a
database as a requirement for receiving unemployment checks. 

AZ> Similarly, in my job as a teacher, I'm amazed with Internet
AZ> technology that allows a class to (for example) connect to
AZ> a web-site hosted in Amsterdam to learn about Ann Frank, or
AZ> to connect to the British Museum's site to learn about
AZ> ancient Egypt. 

AZ> The kids have been doing this all their (short) lives, and
AZ> find nothing unusual about it. 

Removing that intimidation factor is a good thing. Technology
has never been for everyone but computers are a fact of life
and no one can avoid them for a life time. 

>
>        ,                          ,
>      o/      Charles.Angelich      \o       ,
>     <|                              |>  __o/
>     / >          USA, MI           < \   __\__
 

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