A future without a computer? In one phrase, not too pretty. Despite the college degrees, I still remain, in some ways, the kid who busted out of the jail that was high school. While my spelling and punctuation remain a bit irregular, it would totally go off the rails without my faithful computer assistant. For me, there is no stand-in for the sort of aid the computer gives. The program snuffles along behind, pointing out the misspellings I’ve dropped in my hurry to write a post. Even with the assistance, my spelling and grammar can remain colorful. Without it, it’d be a disaster.
Dark Age Computer Programming
Now I’ve been fooling around with computers since the early seventies at Boston University. Geography courses featured prominently in my science requirements. A canny professor of geography introduced a lot of us liberal arts students to statistics and computer programming via some of the geography courses he taught. In those days, running a program meant large boxes of punched cards that were input ( fed into the machine). This is where the term Fold, Spindle, and Mutilate came from. It was an absolute horror to watch the machine spit out boxes of misfed cards – folded, spindled, and mutilated. Each box represented hours of work.
The early familiarity meant that as soon as I could afford a personal computer, I scraped pennies together to get one after grad school. How have I used it since? Writing, game play, and as a graphic tool in carving.
Illustration
I was a carver long before computers. But graphics and illustration were never my strength. With the computer, I prep lettering for carving in minutes, not hours. I can resize images in seconds, and I can manipulate dimensions easily. My careful and selective removal of wood expresses the look and feel of the carving. But the computer helps me get the image onto the wood so I can carve.
The Truth
The truth is that without my computer, things that I do would be much more complicated. And that’s before you calculate how much I rely on it for my blogging and getting the news. While some may yearn for a simpler time without the “computer invasion.” I see the computer as the tool it is. It is, in fact, just a tool, just like the tools in my shop. It makes specific processes possible, convenient, and easier.
Am I locked into computer use? Yes, probably, but in a creative manner. It’s not a passive indulgence like watching television, and there is a difference for me. It remains a tool.
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I like computers. I think they are great creative tools. I “wrote” my first program when I was a kid, seriously, 7 or 8 years old. It was simple. How old will my dad be when he’s twice my age? He helped a LOT but there we were. It was cool. He didn’t live long enough to BE twice my age, but…
I don’t remember the punch cards. The first computer my office used was before windows, and it used a roll of paper to print. But today, I use it for almost everything