The Friendly Computer Book: A Simple Guide for Adults [antikvár]

Children are increasingly at home in the world of computers, which can seem so alien to their elders. Many schools now introduce their students to computers in kindergarten. They grow up wise in the ways of this new technology and sense nothing inherently contradictory in the term "personal computer." They write programs almost as naturally as their parents wrote compositions about what happened during summer vacation. "They know what computers can and cannot do," says IBM's Louis Robinson, "while adults still regard them [computers] as omnipotent." "It's dumb. I have to tell it everything," says a ten-year-ofd who already knows computers. Why are those of us not socialized to the world of bits and bytes so quick to give the computer more than its due? Part of the explanation must certainly lie in our misconceptions about what a computer is and does— that the machine "thinks," or spends most of its time manipulating fierce-looking equations, or is part of a system which is essentially infallible (or else consciously and malevolently fallible). In the back of some of our minds may even be the thought that the computer is somehow better than we, able to transcend our limitations while having none of its own. Unfortunately, the jargon-filled pronouncements of many experts in the field have served only to reinforce these notions. While some of the things that worry us about computers are actually a product of our imaginations, other problems are quite real. For example, their effect on how we make our