Recently I installed a new operating system on my home
computer, and as a result, in order to get the machine running in the manner
to which I've grown accustomed, I had to reinstall quite a number of programs.
This is a time-consuming task, and probably one that more often than not gets
aborted somewhere in the middle. As is also to be expected, one of the side
effects of reinstalling programs is discovering that many of those that were
previously installed haven't been in use for a
very long time (and some probably were never used at all). But there were others
that I still define as absolutely essential to my every day use of the computer.
I installed the Google Toolbar, for instance, as soon as I had my communications
software up and running and I opened my browser.
Quite a few of the programs sitting on my drive not only
haven't been used in ages - they don't even work. They're simply incompatible
with the new operating system. There are others which I thought (long ago) to
be absolutely essential for which today, even if they're still installed, I
no longer have any use. Often I only discover this when I turn to them after
ages of disuse. Converting visual Hebrew to logical
Hebrew for instance, an important and oft-needed task of years gone by is now,
on the whole, an unnecessary task.
Though my computer use is primarily
web-directed with many of the tools I use situated on the web rather than
on my hard drive (or on my bookshelves), I use many sorts of program. First
and foremost of these are, of course, a word processor
and my e-mail program, but I also use an image processor,
a web-developing tool (or two), FTP software,
and numerous accessories like a screen capture tool, compression software, a
note taker, and numerous additional small programs. I even use the calculator
that comes with Windows.
But wait a second. That makes it sound as though I actually have only a rather
limited number of programs installed, and that's certainly not the case. What
else is there? Well, the entirely of Microsoft Office sits on my hard drive
(as it does, I suppose, on the hard drive of everyone that I know). Though there's
much of it that I don't use, I can at least make the claim that I occasionally
open (and use) Excel - something that others very rarely do. What's more, though
I never use it to prepare a presentation, I suppose that it's a good thing that
I've got PowerPoint there as well. Without it I wouldn't be able to view those
uplifting presentations that seem to make the rounds every couple of months,
arriving in my inbox under the Subject line of "that's what friends are
for" or "don't underestimate the power of a smile".
In the best of all possible worlds I suppose that Office
should be (more than) enough, but of course it's not all. When I installed the
new operating system Eitan, who is now old enough to want to talk via the computer
with friends whom he can easily visit with face to face, asked
me to install ICQ. It had been at least three years since I'd last used
ICQ and this request gave me an opportunity to try my hand at it again. So I
diligently found the latest version of the program, downloaded and installed
it, and then tried to find my old, seven digit, ICQ number. I found it - along
with what remained of my old user list. So far one person on that list seems
to still be an ICQ user and we've said hello a couple of times since then. Eitan
is presently pleased with this tool, but do I need it? Well, since I've installed
it I've conversed with my brother a few times, and in general Instant Messaging
seems to have grown up since I first played around with it years
ago, but unless I rebuild a list of users with
whom I've got reason to be in contact when I'm sitting in front of my computer,
I may remove my number and leave Eitan play around with his.
Three years ago I certainly didn't think that my hard drive(s) would be stuffed
with countless images and digital photos, and music files. And of course I need
programs for storing and sorting these, and viewing and/or hearing them. I'd
pretty much stopped using an image indexer until Picasa
recently came along and I found that in many respects it made life easier. But
easier or not, after a flurry of use, I began to discover that I could do without
it. Along similar lines, an mp3 player is mandatory, but the various other tools,
like a CD ripper, that I once thought I'd put to constant use seem only to take
up hard drive space.
At least once in the past I've referred to the important
advice on purchasing a computer that my brother in law gave me years ago when
I was first trying to decide what computer to buy. The numerous changes that
over the years I've made in how I use these machines have given me more than
a few opportunities to learn that he was right, and I've learned to refer to
that advice as a basic law of computer use - what I want to do with the machine
today isn't necessarily what I'll want to do with it tomorrow. But with the
perspective of a number of years of experience a couple of corollaries to that
basic law seem to be called for. First, it's not only that we don't know what
we'll want to do with the computer tomorrow, but that we don't even know what
it's going to be capable of doing tomorrow. Sadly this means that when we know
what we want to do, more often than not we'll discover that even when we planned
ahead, our hardware isn't strong enough for what we want to do. The second corollary
doesn't concern hardware, but instead our own hardwiring. Though the computer
is the ultimate multi-purpose machine, most of us seem to be single-purpose
users. Yes, tomorrow we'll discover that we want to do something new with the
computer, but chances are good that we'll also discover that we no longer want
(or need) to do what we once thought was our basic reason for having the computer
in the first place. Some of us will clean up our mess and allow our computers
to focus on the newer uses we've adopted for ourselves. Others (and I'm certainly
one of these) will leave an historic trail of previous uses, footprints marking
the paths we once traveled, signposts to territory we've explored. And perhaps
these will also serve as diving board into oceans only waded into in the past,
still waiting for new leaps into yet uncharted waters.
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