Tech Talk
Here’s a secret: no one ever emerged from the womb knowing how to back up a hard drive, scan a photo, or make music CD. People have to learn how to do this stuff, and to most of us it doesn’t come naturally.
I’ve been working with, writing about and occasionally programming computers for 25 years. But I was never a science wiz or a computer geek. In fact, I nearly flunked math in high school. I majored in political science in college and never took a computer course. Not that we had any to take -- my alma mater had a computer in those days, but it filled up a room in basement somewhere and I never saw it. In the 1960s, nobody dreamed that we’d ever have these things on our desktops.
Like most people who discovered PCs by accident, I learned by doing things and making mistakes. I occasionally read the manual, but not all that often. Eventually, I discovered that computers aren’t at all mysterious -- in fact they’re relentlessly logical. They also do exactly what you tell them to do -- which isn’t always what you want them to do. The real secret is figuring out how to get your way. You can do it, because you’re a lot smarter than any damn machine.
So over the next few weeks I'll but updating this road map to understanding PCs and doing some of the really cool things that computers make possible. Till then, stay tuned.