An Integral Part of My Life

At the time, that sounded rather far-fetched, but now, that sounds about right.

That's how much computers have changed my life.

Consider another comment I heard not too long ago: "Being unable to read at the turn of the last century is equivalent to being unable to use a computer today - at the turn of this century."

In other words, if they haven't already, computers will play an increasing integral part of your life.

For me, it started back in 1986, when I found that I needed access to computers to do serious stuff like computer aided design, number-crunching or putting together big reports, which is the life of an engineer.

Of course, back then one also needed these machines to play some serious games such as Flight Simulator. But now, I find it hard to string a few decent thoughts together unless I'm in front of one of these machines - at least that's my excuse when my boss catches me off guard.

But that excuse is becoming rapidly unusable and now that we have wireless networks and the power of old mainframes right on our laps, my boss wants to know why then I don't have my computer in front of me all the time.

And the funny thing is, in the six months I've had this boss, I've only met him once - thanks to computers, the Internet and the phone!

So what else besides work are these beasts good for?

Believe it or not, I rarely, if ever, step into a bank or write a cheque because all my banking and sometimes even ordering the groceries is done with my computer. It really is amazing! So how did we get here?

Flashback

I can still remember unpacking it and connecting it to our colour TV. It was a Commodore 64! At the time, back in 1980-something, I was one of the few, not just in the neighbourhood, but probably in Bangkok to own such an awesome machine.

We even got a custom-built work desk designed to house the huge floppy drive. Although I wasn't quite sure what the full potential of such a machine was, the games ensured it was put to full use.

Word processing back then was still in its infancy because it was nearly impossible to print your school essays in a format that would please the teacher. That was then. Today, my computer beeps at me and tells me my next appointment five minutes prior to my forgetting it!

When on the road, my Palm Pilot which is completely synchronised with my computer does all the required beeping.

My PC automatically tracks the one stock that I own, telling me how much it has gone down each time I connect to the Internet. My virus checker automatically uploads the latest virus information to ensure my machine doesn't catch anything.

That's all great, but the question still remains as to how this has changed my life. Well, to put it simply - back then it was a novelty and a luxury. Now, having a computer is a plain simple necessity.

Why? Because without a computer I would not be able to make the living that I currently have. Let's take a look at just some of the things computers have enabled.

When I was in school and I had to do some research for some wretched homework that some overzealous teacher made us do, it was a real pain. It meant a visit to a library on a weekend. It then meant trying to understand Uncle Dewey's numbering system, followed by painful walks through aisles trying to locate books with decimals that never existed.

Of course when you found the book, finding the necessary paragraphs to plagiarize was another painstaking affair. If you did find some gold in a book, you had to photocopy it and then retype it.

Back to the future

Compare that with today, where you simply search online journals through a standard web interface using key words. When you find the gold, which is usually a matter of minutes rather than hours or days, you can cut and paste the information straight into your report and of course reference it to avoid being called a copy cat.

Other things I now never do - I never write a handwritten letter. Even postcards are now a thing of the past with e-mail and digital cameras. In fact I now only own a digital camera - it's awesome. You don't have to get pictures developed, simply shoot, go home, connect it to your PC and voila - you are sending the latest vacation photos to make friends jealous.

The Toys

Back in 1984, it was a state-of-the art Commodore 64. If memory serves me correctly, it had a 1MHz 8-bit Intel CPU and a tape drive. Today, this article was typed on a Dell Pentium 4 running at 1.4 gigahertz with 256 Megabytes of RAM, and get this - a 60 Gigabyte hard disk! of course the 17-inch standard monitor really makes her a screamer! Online experience - I started in the days of Unix hacking back in university in 1986, when one could see who else was on the network and chat online. It then moved to BBSes, especially the Post Database BBS, and finally the Internet, starting with Lynx and then moving onto Netscape.

Oh yeah, and now we even watch movies that we get from the video store on our computer, cause a DVD drive and a 17-inch monitor makes for pretty fine viewing.

So, to put it simply - since I was introduced to computers over 18 years ago, they have gone from being a hobby to being a necessary work tool, having become an integral part of life. The truth is I don't own a car, but I would not be able to manage without owning a computer and, of course, a connection to the Internet.

My guess is that in the future, we will need the ability to always be connected via various different devices to the Internet that will allow us to manage all sorts of things. For instance - programming the VCR or turning the lights off at home while waiting for a flight at the airport. No kidding!