Are Computers Troubles or Conveniences?
With the computer advancing, why do we avoid conveniences it offers us?
Over 10 years have passed, words like "Internet Cafe", "Computer Hall" on shop signs no longer catch your eye. A great deal of computer schools and courses came along. Often you overhear people gathering together talking about their exciting fights that go on just before their eyes──on the computer screen. Recently, my father's friend asked him to choose a relatively modern computer just for "the investment on his adult children and his little granddaughter." Computers, which were often heard in news of technology back in the 1980s, far from being a "plaything" for a 4-year-old child in an ordinary family, have entered into Chinese families at an alarming rate.
Many people think the computer brings opportunities of getting jobs, as nowadays more and more companies vow that job hunters will be more likely to get jobs if they know how to work with computers. Some others see the PC as a good working companion. Still others enjoy its convenience for writing, painting, learning, amusement, etc, and with the popularity of the Internet, people benefit by "world getting smaller."
In next decade we might experience Natural User Interface, which we might not need to use the keyboard and mouse to have the computer do things we want, but to use our voice on the computer. When that time come, nobody will be seen to work with a computer screen and big heavy box, not even with a laptop. They may do nearly every thing, from booking all sorts of tickets and buying groceries to arranging meetings and doing stocks, by talking naturally to "smart devices." In the future computers can actually hear what you say and do what you mean. That's what Microsoft claims to try to develop such devices and systems. Though many people think it is a big cheater and are not satisfied with its products, its ambition to make the fiction-like a reality is exciting. Tomorrow's computer will extend us with more convenience. But will people be ready for this advancement?
Let the future along. At present some conventional people haven't realized how easy life will become with the help of computer and the Internet.
One of my relatives lives in Canada with her daughter and husband, which is a family that surely know the utility their laptop connected to the Internet owns as the couple have to be informed sometimes by their universities online. Every week she calls her parents here in China to catch up with recent family news. Her younger brother living very close to their parents also has a PC and uses broad band to get on the Net. It would be very inexpensive, my parents and I suggest, if they could use voice/video chat tools, such as Netmeeting integrated into MSN Messenger, to talk over the Internet. Not only that, they could even see each other on the screen by using small cameras. Sadly, she has an excuse by saying that she is extremely busy, but how is she able to get around to purchasing telephone cards? Within a few seconds Netmeeting will be able to get her see the lively video of her parents. Is she so busy that she doesn't even have a few minutes sitting at her computer but talking on the phone for 20 minutes? The real reason, I suppose, is not her busyness but that she got quite used to the telephone. She rejects online communication from her subconsciousness. In other word, it's the habit that keeps her from choosing an easier and more convenient way.
She is not the only example I present. My uncle, who lives with my mother's parents far from where we live, has been using the computer for more than 6 years. Not very long ago my mother asked him to buy a webcam so that she could "meet" my grandparents online. To our big surprise, he didn't know people could talk online! Even now he still thinks online communication a dream, to say nothing that he will buy that "high-tech device." Now our camera sits on the monitor, and if it has life, I think, it must feel itself useless.
For some 30 years ago one of my foreign friends began to use the computer. I once asked her to talk with me using MSN Messenger or any tool she would like to install, but she didn't want to try it because she was afraid her PC would crash and her files lose. She is also worried that viruses and hackers would get into her system through chat tools to destroy her computer and to peep at her personal things. Her worry is not unreasonable. After all, she's a computer user, not an expert. Here I quote from the latest letter she wrote to me.
"We must all remember that computers are getting smaller, and smaller, and more and more powerful all the time. Our Federal Privacy Commissioner told us by radio that it is important to be careful of what you allow to be in computers about yourself because if somebody wanted to do it it is possible to use a space as small as a store front to track everybody in where I live now. All records can be collected from various sources such as banks, employers, insurance companies, airlines, stores, your computer server, anything that is recorded by computer can be drawn together to develop and image of you, your private issues, and what you do in life.
Such information is already being analyzed for sales and promotion purposes. The government is trying to put laws in place to protect individual's privacy, but it is possible for a person to be specially targeted with advertising offers, and ads on your computer, that have been specially chosen and tailored just for you! It is a remarkable thing, but very dangerous if governments ever want to use it for methods we don't even want to think about now.
Our own computer can be used to look at us if we have the kind that gives a video view while we chat. A woman was stalked by someone whom she had met by computer, and found to be a jerk. She was later talking with another friend when the stalker came online and told her what she was wearing and doing, and threatened her. This is not fiction. It happened. In fact, I read about it in Reader's Digest."
Carefulness is not a bad thing, but it has two angles. One is that if it is dangerous you try not to touch it. The other is that you try to prevent the possible danger from happening. Apparently the latter is positive. Not every one will come across instances as the woman, whom was mentioned in the quote, had unfortunately met. Users, however, especially those with few expertise in computer, fear for viruses and hackers attacking, even though the chances are very small if they have firewall and other protection tools. From this point fear and carefulness are the factors that block the Internet interaction between users.
I used the word "convenience" all through my essay. For individuals in the world of computer and the Internet interaction makes conveniences. What makes interaction available to every one? Acceptance. What do we need to accept new things? To get rid of some deep-rooted habits, to be given security, and what is most important, to change ourselves with the world’s pace. Get back to the ambition Microsoft has. Will it be realized in a decade or so? Will "smart devices" have enough charm to win people's acceptance? Will they give us real convenience? We have to wait for the answers. While we wait, don't we need to do something for others and for ourselves?
Jenny
