COMPUTER. ILLITERATE

                                            COMPUTER   ILLITERATE

“Anyone who stops learning is old whether at twenty or eighty.

Anyone who keeps learning stays young (even at hundred).”

                                               ---  Henry  Ford

Yes, I belong to the B.C. era (Before the Computer era !).  Some years ago I saw an ad of a mini model laptop with an offer of a discount in a newspaper.  Seeing my curiosity at it, my niece, ‘Chinnapapa'G.S. Sravanthi, M.Sc (Bioinformatics), who was here during that fortnight,  placed a mail order.  Promptly it was sent by courier mail, and Chinnapapa made me a tad computer literate.  With the mini machinery and a bit of elementary knowledge, I felt I was roaming about all over the world !

   Truth to tell, I had been using a manual typewriter until that time which evoked bewildered dismay from the tribe of tech-savvy computer geeks.   I was such a novice to the systems that  I was  reluctant  to use a computer, its language too alien, its pitfalls daunting.  In fact, I took to it about as willingly as a cat takes to water ! Now, I am just able to type this writing myself on the laptop, perhaps, with many errors. 

I know only a fraction of what the present day kids know about electronic gadgets. In fact, my tech-savvy granddaughter,  Versha Rajeev aged about 9 years plonks around on the laptop so proficiently that I consider her as my ‘digital guru’ and learn a lot from her.   Even before I could get a feel of the small laptop, my sister Nirmala got one acer Aspire S3 series  (and later on Samsung Galaxy S IV) for me, though I still don’t know much about computers.   And, last month (March 2017) when I again went to Singapore, the computer geeks,  Chinnapapa  and Peddapapa (daughters of my sister, settled in Singapore) thought that I was using an outdated machine with Windows 7.  Hence, I got ‘MacBook Pro’ Retina.  And, Peddapapa thought that the ’Android’ phone I was having too was archaic, and rushed     to the shop to get an ‘iPhone’ !   I am now typing on the ‘Mac’ while learning to use this system.  Even the clunky simplicities like the “Amstrad emailer” are complex devils for me.  The gung-ho comments about how digital technology would wipe out our old methodology send chills down the spine that we may be “left behind.”  It is inevitable to be in line with the busy tap and glow of urban screen-junkies in this ‘Age of the Geek’ !

The Net has become the fount of all knowledge, and a quick swig from the fount provides satiety to the brain on almost any subject.  The unimaginable algorithms and the virtually unlimited information provided by computers are simply mind-boggling and incredible indeed.  There is good and bad of everything.  Technology is a great leveller, though it is a double-edged sword.   I think there is room for both at the table.

 No doubt, the children, nowadays, are enriched very early with good general knowledge, better IQ, excessive information and immense confidence through electronic gadgets and by tethering themselves to a global network.   At this point of time, the Indian child’s online presence, ‘social media site’ (SMS)  usage and activity, and the consequent cyber trolls, cybercrime, bullies, blackmailers and stalkers are not alarming.  But the Indian child would also be a target for online fraud and , the associated cybercrime in future with tremendously growing SMS usage by children.To know about the present day electronic lifestyle of the children and adults, read under the headings “MODERN  PARENTS & TRENDY  CHILDREN”  and “THE  INTERNET  (GOOGLE)  EFFECT” on this blog.

        People  rushed to buy (in 2012) ‘Apple iPhone 5’ priced at Rs. 45,000 for the basic model, though LTE networks hardly existed at that time in India and though the special features related to ‘personal assistant Siri’ and ‘Apple Maps’ were out-of-bounds for Indian users !  It is because of the status and prestige consciousness – which is something like what is classically known as a ‘Veblen good’.   Later (2014),  the Apple’s ‘iPhone 5S’ with A7 and M7 chips arrived as the best smartphone as also the Sony’s android ‘Sony Xperia Z2’ with BRAVIA engine and a 20.7 megapixel Exmor RS camera.  And a little later (2016),  the ‘amazing’ ‘Apple iPhone 7’ arrived while the just introduced SAMSUNG Galaxy Note 7 made an unceremonious exit following a fire in the phone while inside a passenger aircraft.

DOCTORS  NOT  COMPUTER  SAVVY

Fortunately or unfortunately, it looks that a majority of the medical practitioners are not computer trained.  According to a recent study on “Information needs and seeking behaviour of medical practitioners in Tamil Nadu,”  which is presented in the Ph.D. thesis (page 240) of Dr. BO. Sathivel Murugan, Ph.D., Librarian, Perundurai Medical College & Research Centre,  it is found that 62 per cent of the medical practitioners have a “barrier to obtaining Information Sources”  due to lack of computer training. Of course, the computer literacy will improve in course of time just as the general literacy in India improved from 12 per cent in 1947 to 74 percent in 2013.

I wonder what the Gen-Next would be writing about us.  I am a late-learner.  Some time ago, while I was still learning the fundamentals, my sister Nirmala bought me one  iPad 2, a model which the ‘Apple Brain’ Steve Jobs unveiled in San Francisco on March 2, 2011 to a standing ovation. I wonder whether ‘Apple’, the brand name was chosen foreseeing the ‘Apps’ (applications) boom.

 DIGITAL  WONDERS 

I went through the brief notes on the ‘Apps’ like ‘Flipboard’, Dropbox’, ‘Whatsapp’, ‘Path’, ‘Skype’, Wolframalpha, ‘Pocket’, ‘Evemote’, ‘Alfred’, ‘Crashplan’, ‘Angry Birds’, ‘Words with Friends’, ‘Cut the Rope, ‘Kindle’, ‘Dhingana, ‘Get Running’, ‘Movies by Flixster, with Rotten Tomatoes’, ‘Brian Cox’s Wonders of the Universe’, ‘Kapu Forest’, ‘Toy Story Read-Along’, ‘Kids Numbers and Math Lite’, ‘Fun and Games for Cats’, ‘Mosquito Killer’, ‘The Perfect Egg Timer’. ‘Freaky alarm’, Bowel Mover Pro’, etc. After going through it, I thought that it is all only for my next ‘janma’ (birth) ! I couldn’t understand a bit,  except that the ‘Bowel Mover Pro’  makes graphs of our bowel movements which can be ‘shared’ with others of our kind, and possibly a graphic record of the ‘bowel waste’ (I didn’t want to use the word ‘shit’) since our birth !  

2014 saw introduction of some new gadgets like iPhone 5S,  Sony Xperia Z2,  Google Glass,  Fitbit Force,  Pebble Steel Smartwatch,  Prio-VR,  Samsung Galaxy Note Pro,  Nexus 7,  iBall Slide 6318i,  iPad Air and the iPad Mini with Retina Display,  ASUS transformer Pad TF 701T,  Sen.Se Mother,  Yellow Jacket iPhone Stun Gun Case,  Phonesoap,  Kolibree Smart Toothbrush,  Goji Smart Lock,  Chefjet Pro 3D Food Printer,  Chromecast,  the group calls Talko, etc.  Even while I am writing this, many more would have come into the market.

LIFE  SANS  CELLPHONES !

Yes, you are right, we didn’t have cell phones.  In my schooldays, only a few privileged people owned landline phone connections. The rest used to go to Post & Telegraph offices rarely and wait for hours and hours to get connectivity with a phone and shout in the phone (if they just talk, it wouldn’t be audible!) for a few seconds or at the most a few minutes (they had to pay a huge amount if they talk for more than a minute!).  Mobile phones were not even in the realm of dreams.

Mr. C. Sellakutty of the 'Sanatorium' used to type my writings.   I learned a bit of typing after I purchased a small portable manual typewriter in early 1970s.  With the present laptops, the whole ‘world library’ is on one’s lap.  The unimaginable algorithms and the virtually unlimited information provided by computers are simply mind-boggling and incredible indeed.

INFORMATION  OVERLOAD

The proverb “Art is long,  life is short” is very apt in this context –  in a lifetime we cannot browse even a minute fraction of the information available on the Internet.  If we type "digital camera" over Google, we get 20 million hits.  Prof. Nirmalya Kumar, Director, Centre for Marketing, London Business School says that this is "information overload" which confuses the customer, instead of enlightening!  Read this humorous article to know how confusing and misleading would be the information on the Net:   (http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/open-page/world-wide-wisdom-is-it-so/article3340121.ece )                                                                                                            

                                            

         

                         

THIS  IS  AN  ABRIDGED  TEXT  OF  MY  ARTICLE.      CLICK  HERE  TO  SEE  THE  FULL  ARTICLE.   --  T. Rama Prasad