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1994-03-08
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I'd like to send out a call to you, Readers (and non-readers ?)
to know your points of view about the articles and the subjects.
I also need to know what matter you would like me to discuss about.
Are you confronted to a problem and would like to read
different viewpoints ?
Don't hesitate send your comments, questions and
suggestions (under any decent form) to ZAM.
This is YOUR diskmag !
ZEX
=========================================================================
Today's reflection on our time will ask :
IS COMPUTING A PLOT TO RIP OFF PEOPLE ?
In other words, have Commodore, IBM and Apple invented computers
to waste people's money, energy and time ?
This is a question I often ask myself when I hear or see people
complaining about the Civil Services' errors or those of any other big
bureaucratic entity (either civil or private). When a widow receives a
notice from the Social Security for his husband to go for a checkup first
we laugh and then we find this a bit outrageous. We find the situation
funny but the problem is when we think upon it and realise that so many
people's life and health are in the hands (if I may say so) of those
institutions' computers without an easy way to defend oneself as we could
do against private companies.
However I know what you'll reply to this argument. It's not the computers'
fault. It's caused by the way they're used. So let's put the matter in a
different light.
Once a day Mrs X decided to buy a computer. You can do so many things and
more with it she thought. Writing letters, doing the accounts, learning,
making the children learn with fun, playing (though she may not admit she
will `you know it's for the kids'). She went to a more or less serious
retailer and she'll be home with a wonderful PC (I'm just joking, we all
know that wonderful PC's don't exist !!) or any other computer. And the
nightmare to start... Phone again and again to the retailer or anyone who
will help. There's always something that won't work. It's also hard to
get used to. Whereas she thought her life would be eased, now she has to
face extra trouble trying to get the machine to work and herself used to
it. Chasing the missing mouse driver or the right software to fully
exploit the computer's capacities.
Well I may sound pessimistic and I'll admit this might be one of the
worst case. But where the shoe pinches is when after a while she
realises that the system she dearly bought is now sold for much less and
that it is almost obsolete. Of course this is the law of progress...
What I wanted to show through this little story is that if you want to
compute you must be utterly mad...about it. What is also indirectly
revealed is that today computers are always evolving. You must be able
to evolve along. It's then no surprise to observe such non-sense on the
part of administrative services where people are more or less forced to
work on computers.
On the other hand computers are just lifeless cold machines and nothing
more. Improvements have been made since their early days to make the
'dialogue' between the common user and the computer more liveable. But
the relationship is still very far from the natural one like the one
people have in any vulgar communication. A computer can't make a choice.
It can only make those the programmer taught it to take. As the richness
of the human being is infinite there are always some particular cases
that will lead to ambiguities and absurdities.
However computers are a good thing (otherwise I wouldn't be here writing
for ZAM !). They have tremendously (but often in a discrete way)
simplified our lives and we should not blame them. Our natural tendency
to spare our energy made us forget that today life is much easier even
though it is much more dynamic than before. This may have caused some
loss in its quality. But that's another matter. We should keep in mind
that after all the error was invented by Man (in a wide sense) to
progress...
Thanks for reading.
ZEX.
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A Compliment From Gears
May I just take this opportunity to tell everyone that ZEX is french.
Aha! I bet you'd never realised ! Zex uses more long words and english
technical punctuation grammar type stuff than I ever do. Well, I'm a
lazy geet who can't be bothered to spell wordz proper like. So,
anyway... if there are any europeans out there who wanna write, hit
that reply button !