COMPUTERSAURUS.

Image courtesy of Alamy.com

I bought my first personal computer in 1992.  It was an Amstrad and had a whole 256K of memory.  I had trotted along to a specialised computer sales shop to make this purchase so that I could be properly advised on what I needed.

The sales guy assured me I should not even consider the 356K model.  This was top of the range and only a business would need its memory capacity.  As the years and computers advanced relentlessly forward, I clung obstinately to my little Amstrad.

It saw me through my study for a Communications degree using it's very natty word-processing program Locoscript to write essays.  After completing the degree, at thirty-eight years of age, and finding no suitable employment, I lowered my expectations and looked for secretarial work.   While I hadn't been looking, the job title had become redundant (after centuries of perfectly good use) and become Administration Assistant.

Once upon a time a secretary remained trained for life.  But things had changed, and will continue to change eternally, due to that clever initiative of the computer manufacturers - planned obsolescence.  Armed with my superlative Locoscript skills I headed for the recruitment agents who, very shortly, would decide they ran the universe after they changed their job description to Human Resources.

Again, while I hadn't been looking, secretaries ...ah... administration assistants, had to suddenly know more, much more, than their employers who only had to contend with learning how to operate their new brick-sized mobiles.  Their AA's had to know Wordperfect 4 then 4.1 and MS Word 365 then 4.  This was still the 1990's.  Then someone added insult to injury and invented Excel.

Every year or so a new version of these would come out.  Some offices had old versions. some new ones and you needed to know them all.  It wasn't like walking into an office in the 1970s, before my employment era, when all you had to contend with was a typewriter, a photocopier, a phone and a filing system.  An Administration Assistant had to be multi-skilled because their employer didn't have the time to learn how to operate a computer.  The AA was there for that.

And so began my intensive efforts to train myself up, at some cost, so I could become viable as an employee.  It didn't matter what I did, however, I couldn't keep up with the technology train. Every recruitment agent put me through tests.  I became good enough at these to fudge my way through Excel, Word and Wordperfect at reasonable levels of proficiency. Tragically my typing speed never could creep above 50wpm.  Who cared with all this technology?  Word processors made the job of typing faster than with a typewriter so only a Hansard reporter really needed to be a speed whiz.

The bane of my existence was when a knowledge of MYOB became de rigeur to get a job. I'm no accountant and avoid dealing with books and statements like the plague.  I'm a creative person.  What I can do to numbers isn't worth thinking about.  While I struggled, computers, programs and operating systems continued to change at light speed.

Then along came the Internet and email.  These were wonderful additions but work became more intensive with their introduction.  Mobiles got smaller and then along came laptops and Smartphones.  Managers and employers had to become completely computer savvy, but the result was that they could work faster and harder wherever they were.  They can remote print documents on a printer in their office from their laptop on a plane.  The result of this is that many of them no longer need AA's.  Well I didn't like office work anyway.

It's been a roller coaster ride but it has involved a huge amount of constant learning by the humans who have to absorb the information as it comes along.  In fact we are all, everyone of us, in business or not, suffering from information overload.

Youth get excited at every new development.  My partner says we're getting old because we don't want anymore change.  I disagree.  I was a computer programmer in my youth. That was before everyone involved with computers started describing themselves as in 'I.T.'  They don't differentiate between whether they sell the things, program or install them.  They're just in 'I.T'.

The day I knew computers were going to be a source of irritation to me was the day I took my Labrador to the Vet.  It's not easy holding on to a forty kilo ball of muscle at a reception counter while waiting to pay the fee.  The waiting room isn't big enough for a number of dogs on leashes at a suitable distance from one other.  A dog on a leash near another dog becomes defensive/aggressive because, being restrained, it doesn't feel able to defend itself.  I know this because I had to take said Labrador to special training lessons due to a slight personality disorder he had.  I learned a lot, he didn't.

The Vet's receptionist took my money and attempted to give me a receipt.  The cash register had been hooked up to the computer and couldn't be opened until she found the command to do so embedded deep in the menu.  Another person was called to help.  They "Ummed" and "Aahed" and tried different things.

I suggested they could just open the register, give me my change and a hand written receipt.

"Sorry, no can do.  Only the computer can open it.  The payment option is about six levels down in the menu," they informed me as my arm was being wrenched off.  "New system," they explained.  What wasn't in the 90's?  The whole process took ten minutes. 

Every advance in computer technology has, like Newton's law, been met with an equal and opposite regression.  For example, my dear Amstrad, with its tiny but adequate memory, did not make it into the Millenium.  Word had taken over and I bought a Dell with all the latest Windows stuff.

I like things that last.  My vacuum belonged to my mother and lasted thirty years.  My fridge lasted twenty, my washing machine is still going and is so old it has no lid surround.  To me that is technology at its best.  Ah, but not so the Dell.  After eight years the Internet got a tad sluggish, if not to say, bad tempered.  My stepson told me it was a dinosaur.  I said it suited me fine.  But it couldn't load Windows XE and the Internet finally slowed so much it gave up.

The real problem is not that the computer's memory is too small, it is that the new Word, Excel etc. come with stuffing like the air that fills potato chip packets.  I wouldn't be surprised if there were polystyrene registers labelled as memory.

We've gone from Kilobytes to Megabytes to Gigabytes to, heaven forbid, Terabytes. Somehow the programs worked with mere Kilobytes.  Somehow man got to the moon with the help of a really basic computer.

I want you to think about this.  Apparently a human only uses ten percent of its brain capacity.  What in the hell are we going to do with terabytes?  The home computer just doesn't need that much memory.  Oh, some say it's about speed.  Yes, sure it is.  Just how fast do you want to go?

Most people use the Internet for social drivel.  A little time lag can add some depth and thinking time.  Newspapers on-line have become magazines and their major sections are devoted to which man Kim Kardishan has recently married/divorced or had a baby with.

I've just bought a new laptop as my old computer threw up its mouse and surrendered.  I told it I still loved it but it told me it had become impotent and I should look for a younger one.  I gave in and went for a laptop, my first, which came with Windows 8.  I'm used to Windows but not this version.  This has to be the least user-friendly beast ever invented.  I swear they do it on purpose so they can fix it next time.  But then you have to buy the upgrade.

Give me Computersaurus Rex, please.  Stop all this progression.  Just stop for a while and smell the roses before someone digitizes them. Please.

END