The Computer and Us

The computer. Few if any modern inventions could define our world of today more precisely than this marriage of electronic software and hardware. And few areas in the scientific and tecnological evolution of human society, have elicited more comment, more sould-searching and more equivocation than this. But like the motor-car, which still has its many detractors, the computer is here to stay, for good or evil. Hopefully it is for the former, it all depends on how we use it. After all, we still have not learnt how best to live with the motor-car which is arguably much more capable of harming our environment than the computer and perhaps, although it may not seem so at present, less useful and revolutionary than the computer, not to mention its more powerful and all-pervasive younger sibling, the Internet. But, notwithstanding the indisputable significance of the Internet, which is still growing, I will be restricting my comments in this blog to the computer per se, the Internet will be the subject of a future blog. After all, it deserves a whole blog to itself!

I'm old enough to recall a time when the manual typewriter was the order of the day and the last word in office equipment, along with the xerox photocopier - and the only electrical device on my desk was the telephone! Then came the electric typewriter, which represented a modest leap forward, after which it was not long before the electronic typewriter arrived on the scene. The electronic typewriter often came fitted with a short narrow strip of LCD screen on which appeared the words that you typed, though as yet there was no way of making integrated corrections other than by using the correction track of a combined typing and correction ribbon, itself a great improvement on the hand-applied snopake/tippex correction fluid or correction paper strip. By now some large companies had set up so-called computer rooms where rows of grey cabinets whirred away with the sound of rotating spools of data tape which impressed by their sheer bulk and number than by their computing ability. It was not in fact until the arrival of the first batch of machines which ran on elaborated programs and had decent-sized text display screens that the modern-day computer was born in any real sense of the word. And with the computer it was recognised that some sort of printer was needed to produce hard copy. We were now in the 1990s and the home computer age had truly arrived, having grown out of the computer developed for business and industrial needs. The next few years would see constant improvement of the software and hardware that would turn these rudimentary electronic machines into powerful, flexible and ever more capable computers that would proliferate in the office environment as a multi-use tool.

My first computer was the humble Amstrad model which came packaged with a separate keyboard and printer. The software was basic, the monitor was small, and the printer, fitted with a daisy-wheel printing component, was about as noisy as the old golf-ball typewriter, as it too was based on the percussion principle. But it was a start and the price was reasonable for the time, which is why the Amstrad computer became so popular in its first years. Later on, as more capable computers came on stream and were made available at competitive prices, the Amstrad, which could not compete in terms of capability, began to lose ground and eventually disappeared. But it had introduced many thousands of people to the principle of the computer and now the market was ready for a whole host of different makes and models, sporting new and attractive refinements. As I began to lose patience with my noisy and very limited daisy-wheel printer and the equally limited software which ran it, I realised it was time to throw it out and acquire one of the new crop of computers running on Windows 98 and using the quiet ink-jet printers. I was ready for the next step up in the computer ladder.

Since then and several models on, the computer has become an integral part of my life, both for work and for leisure, as it has for millions and millions of people worldwide, and its appeal has of course been enormously boosted by the Internet. Indeed for many people who do not use the computer for work purposes, the Internet and all its trappings - e-mail, games, networking, social encounter sites, and other online applications - are the sole reason for its appeal and this has fuelled an exponential growth in its take-up, going into many millions of homes and being duplicated inside each home as each member of the household feels the need to have his own exclusive machine, often within a network and sharing a common signal from a device known as a router. The computer, whether a desktop or a laptop or indeed both, is a familiar piece of furniture in every household. Even the common television set has now been recruited to double up as a computer terminal!

The computer has truly come of age, going from being a purely practical and rather limited industrial machine to a powerful must-have multimedia device in every home, as numerous as the tv set and with much greater potential. It is not for nothing that the times we are now living in have been christened the Computer Age and this is just the beginning. Our lives now are influenced and shaped by the computer and our living habits are fast changing as a consequence of our changing relationship with this ever-more powerful and capable piece of machinery . There is hardly a field of human activity that has not been affected by the computer as it spreads its tentacles into every aspect of human existence. But this brings us on to the other aspect of computing, a veritable revolution in itself with unimaginable ramifications and implication - the Internet - and that is something I will be looking at in another post.

Misguided Exhibitionists or Innocent Victims?

WHY is it that today's western society is unhealthily fascinated by the private lives of private individuals who usually have nothing special about them and do not lead even mildly interesting lives? I refer to our television culture and specifically to the growing number of programmes that see fit to go into people's homes or workplaces or wherever and follow them around as they live out their everyday lives and go about their everyday business and who would not normally warrant filming in any shape or form simply because there is really nothing of real interest in their lives any more than there is in the ordinary day-to-day humdrum existence of Joe and Jill Bloggs or even John and Jane Dow - that's you and me! After all, what is it exactly that we gain from this prurient eavesdropping on ordinary people’s lives? Do we actually learn anything? Is there a point to be made? Is it more than an unhealthy and overblown curiosity to pry into other people’s lives, especially when these other people are more often than not vacuous and annoying individuals who are elevated to a status they seldom deserve? And, though we might be entertained in some way – indeed there are those of us who would be entertained by watching paint dry – is there nothing worthier that could be broadcast which would require a little more creativity and artistic skill than just pointing a tv camera at a moving subject and which would entertain us in a more legitimate and rewarding manner?

AND talking of vacuous and annoying individuals, let's visit the natural habitat of such a person. It's bad enough when we are filming some particular nobody going about their daily life but it gets decidedly worse when it is one of these “problem-airing” chat shows that pretend to solve family and social problems for the great unwashed of our society. On they come in a never-ending procession of fat (oops, sorry, 'overweight') ugly misfits (or even skinny ugly misfits), speaking their appallingly bad English, wearing their unbelievably bad-taste clothes, ill-fitting and ill-matching, that usually hang off them like so many rags, the men parading their beer-guts before our jaded eyes and the women their overgrown rumps, and straight off they begin spitting venom from their foul mouths and making threatening gestures in each other’s angry faces with their intrusive limbs.
 

And these are the creatures we’re meant to feel sorry for and make every attempt to assist through such programmes with their panoply of DNA paternity tests, lie-detector tests, and their stand-by army of counsellors, therapists and body-language experts. Do me a favour!

ONE can surely not fail to notice that the overwhelming majority, over 90% I would say, of the individuals who come on these shows to wash their dirty laundry in public are from the same type of background, social class and educational and cultural level, wherever they hail from in this hallowed land. Most of them are uneducated, uncultured, uncouth and undignified in the extreme, a really nasty piece of work, one might say. Many of them are part of the loutish yob culture, rough and ready, kitted out in shell-suits, jogging gear, filthy crumpled jeans, shapeless sack-like jumpers and sweaters or clinging little belly-exposing blouse tops in the case of the women or tasteless loose-fitting shirts that dangle outside their trousers almost down to their knees like night-shirts in the case of the men. They make their angry entrances, wagging a finger at their adversary, mouthing oaths and obscenities, lungeing at their perceived opponent and, unable to do lay in to them because of the hired bodyguards who hold them back, having to settle for a verbal attack of a stream of ignorant and offensive invective. And these are the oafish louts that populate daytime tv and provide entertainment for the masses who have nothing else to occupy their time, it would seem, and we’re meant to take their troubles (mostly self-inflicted) seriously and bend over backwards to succour them. No way!

WHAT is it about folk like that who think nothing of coming on television and exposing their tacky tasteless lives to hundreds of thousands if not millions of viewers? What do they hope to gain by it? Is it money? It surely cannot be that, as they are paid relatively very little if anything at all, as I understand it (though I stand to be corrected). Is it fame? Because if it’s this, then it’s not the type of fame or notoriety that any person with an ounce of dignity and self-pride would wish. And this is because the crushing majority of them are shown to be the pathetic clueless individuals that they are and by the time they have given vent to their bile and had their 10-15 minutes of air-time, we are glad to be rid of them and never want to see their ugly mugs or hear their rough voices again. Many of us, who tuned in in the first place, hoping to derive some sinful pleasure from the trials and tribulations of society’s hoi-polloi, learn our lesson and resolve never to view such programmes again.

Those, however, who have not yet learnt their lesson and do not desist, would do better to sign up for regular psychotherapy sessions and cure themselves of their ugly habit of slumming it with the manky masses who think the sun shines out of their arse!

ONE of the stupidest things that guests are wont to say when they are being put upon or booed by their audience is: “This ain’t got nuffink to do with you. Why don’t you mind your own fuckin’ business?!” If they would pause for one moment and realise how ridiculous such a comment is they might not say such a thing again. Here they are, after having applied to come on a tv programme whose principal if not sole aim is to show people washing their dirty laundry in front of the public at home and in the studio and these brainless idiots respond to an unwelcome comment by telling the offender to mind his own business. You might think that if they did not want anyone to meddle in their business they would not have volunteered to come on a show whose aim is to do just that. But no, the paradoxical nature of their stance never seems to occur to them. They want to have their cake and eat it. It’s all fine and dandy to parade themselves and their squalid feuds on mainstream television, but as soon as they get adverse comments and stern criticism from their audience they hit back with the ludicrous remark that the sordid problem they have just aired in front of zillions of people is none of anyone else’s business! Don’t these individuals ever stop to think? 

QUITE frankly it is enough to watch a few of these tv spectacles with their loutish ego-inflated dull-eyed denizens, to make one despair of humanity. They give the expressions “the good people of this country” and “people are not stupid, you know” an ironic twist and leave a bad taste in one’s mouth. No doubt there are millions of people who would not be seen dead on one of these problem-airing chat shows and to them I would apologise if I have appeared to lump them in the same sack. There is some hope on the horizon, small though it is. But one thing’s for sure, and that is that if I were attempting to discourage aliens from adopting the Earth as their new home I would sit them down in front of a giant tv screen and let them watch several hours of these ridiculous shows with their line-up of circus freaks ranting on about their seedy aimless lives and rowdy infighting and see if that did not deter them for good! I would bet you any money they would high-tail it back into space and never return to this conflict-ridden fucked-up planet of ours!

P.S. - ALTHOUGH I've included pictures of well-known tv shows here, they merely serve to illustrate my post. The nasty and venomous comments made by me here and the sweeping generalisations slandering (not to say libelling) a whole host of people, people who are basically good and decent and an example to us all, do not necessarily relate to anyone in these shows.