Copyrights reserved by the author. If you are in doubt, please click on 'Copyrights' and read the details.A history of the computer according to me. Part 2 By J. G. Fabiano I am told the Internet was organized and developed by our nation’s defense department. The defense department did this to speed up their communication and thus become more efficient. I assume the idea was OK but when the Internet hit the general public all it did was make everyone less efficient. Before the wonderful world of the Internet when one wanted to communicate with someone they would either write a letter or call them on the phone. If the communication was not that important and did not need an instantaneous answer the letter was the better of the two. Actually it was a lot more personal and took a lot more time. If one needed to get in touch with someone immediately the telephone was the way to go. It seems in today’s world everyone has to get to everyone right away. The concept of waiting for anything went the way of tuning up one’s own car. Early on the Internet did not do well. This was because the computers and on-line services were expensive. Dial-up systems were the only way to go and this produced massive frustration because of that damned blue bar that never seemed to become full but, because it was new and something anyone who was anyone had the popularity of this new means of aggravation became popular. The on-line companies did their best to addict people by producing chat rooms where people could meet people they would not ordinarily meet. This was sometimes a good thing but evolved into reasons marriages brake up. New relationships were created simply by typing in things you would not ordinarily talk about to someone you did not know. To be honest this still seems remarkably foreign to me because it is common fact that the bright young lady you think you are talking to is probably some 50 year old beer-gutted bald guy who always wanted to be girl in the first place. In fact, I am pretty sure the on-line companies built their server around the concept to get as many people as possible addicted to the service. I say this because even though you were not in a chat room every now and then someone would make a box pop up on your screen attempting to communicate with you even though you did not initiate the connection. The first time this happened to me was when I was taking some time looking for a writer’s page. All of a sudden a box appeared in the middle of my screen. The person who was on the other side of the box asked what I was doing. For some odd reason I told it, because I did not know whether or not the person was a male or female, what I was doing and then asked what they were doing. I can’t answer what he or she told me but it foreshadowed where this newest technology was going to take us. Chat rooms evolved into, ‘instant messages’ or IM for short. This technology allowed the user to communicate with people anytime they wanted to. One on one conversation became the rule with group conversations becoming more and more popular. The concept of meeting a group of friends at a restaurant or shopping area was replaced by appointments where people would sign in on their computer at the same time so they could talk to each other. At least one didn’t have to worry about what they wore or who was going to buy that first round of drinks. That is before the IM’s developed a means of using a small cam so the person on the other side of the line could see you as you talked. I did say talk here because typing was replaced by microphones. The video telephone started to catch on. This was before people saw what they looked like after the computer took their image and digitalized it. This is usually not a good thing and it has the capacity to have you see what you really look like. Many cams were put back in its boxes after the user stared at what the person on the other end of the line was really seeing. The addiction grew worse with the introduction of cell phones. At first this was a convenient way to communicate with friends and loved ones. But, the cell phone companies worked with the on-line companies to develop a cell phone that was a mini-computer that could E-mail, IM, and surf the web. Now they even have a small cam or camera in which the users can send photos or movies to wherever they want to send them. Blackberries were developed so a person could check his E-mail 24 hours a day. The technology was exploding, our privacy was eroding, and the addiction was heightened in most of our lives. This technology also brought different types of frustrations into our lives. These were in the form of viruses some poor computer geek developed in order to feel a sense of importance. I wouldn’t be surprised if the same poor schmuck who wanted to be a girl in a chat room was discovered and thus had to destroy what made him or her become a schmuck in the first place. Viruses gave rise to massive international companies that promised to protect one’s computer and thus one’s life against these viruses. When one thought the problem was under control a new form of attack was developed in the form of ‘spy-ware’. I have yet to figure out what this is other than the fact everything I do on-line is now the personal possession of everyone on the net. Of course the concept of identity theft grew out of this newest assault. Pop-ups made using the web as a reference tool literally impossible. Of course the anti-virus and anti-spy-ware companies jumped into the act of selling software that protected the user against this newest of invasions. I sincerely wonder if the companies that were developed to protect us did not create the attack in the first place. Ok, so I am addicted to a technology that was supposed to make my life easier. Staring into my white screen looking down at all the anti-computer virus programs I have set up I wonder if my first excursion into technology was a correct one. Damn, a pop-up just came up promising a means of making my life less complex. I don’t need this because all I have to do to make my life easy is to shut the damned machine off. The End.
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