All Things Computed
The Absurd Ramblings of a Computer Trainer
This book is dedicated to all the students who have endured my strange humor over the years. Perhaps some of them learned something. But mostly, I hope they enjoyed the classes.
Note: This text is excerpted from Luther Maddy’s All Things Coputed - the absurd ramblings of a computer trainer.
Understanding & Using Software
Video: Understanding and Using Software
Software is a computer program. A program is a set of instructions that cause the computer to behave in a certain way. Instructing a computer is no easy task. This is why computer programmers and web site developers are often the oddest individuals you will ever encounter. If you have ever tried to converse with a computer programmer, then your experience has certainly verified that working with computers does indeed cause insanity.
Encountering a computer programmer or website developer out in public is much more likely now than in the past. This is because federal attempts at assimilation and mainstreaming have forced programmers to reside among the general public, rather than be housed in special facilities full of like-minded individuals where their medications can be monitored and behavior controlled.
Despite enormous difficulties, some programmers have attained small measures of success instructing computers. Computer programs are also called software. The term software is probably a subliminal reference to the straight jacket most computer programmers and web developers will eventually wear.
Software available for computers usually fits into one of five categories. These categories are: 1) Word-processing, 2) Database Management, 3) Spreadsheets, 4) Games, 5) Utilities and 6) Social Media, and 7) Artificial Intelligence. Each category has been designed to appeal to a certain class of computer user, thereby broadening the base for potential destruction.
1) Word-processing:
Word-processing programs are designed to process words. To use a word-processor, you most often type words into the computer from the keyboard. You may also try to speak words into a microphone. With this method, you talk into the microphone and hope the computer types what you say. Unfortunately, this method is by far the most frustrating and nearly useless. If you’ve ever tried to correct a teen-ager, be it yours or someone else’s, you will understand the futility of trying to talk to your computer and have it respond to your commands. You can expect things like, “I didn’t hear you.” Or, “I thought you said…”
Since computers rarely do what you want them to do in the first place, giving them the chance to misinterpret your commands by speaking to them is not a good idea.
When using a word processor, as you type, your words will appear on the computer’s screen. It is very difficult to type on a smart phone and trying to process words on one of these devices is futile.
Even using a full-sized keyboard is no guarantee of accuracy. Even with a keyboard, the computer will still input the wrong letters or words just to irritate you. This is why all computer keyboards have a key labeled “Backspace”. If you are going to process words, you will need to use this key often.
Word-processors often act much like their first cousins: food processors. Food processors take several varieties of food and process them until the end result bears no resemblance to the original items. The same is true for word-processors.
Imagine that you are carefully and meticulously typing a letter, report or other document into your computer. After spending hours inputting and revising, your document is finally complete. Before printing the document, you decide to make one small change, perhaps a change to the left margin. To accomplish this, you select the command that instructs the word-processing software to change the left margin.
The word-processing program, created as you will recall by a psychotic programmer, then instructs the computer to change the left margin in your document. This is the moment the computer has been waiting for. Sensing its opportunity, the computer seizes the initiative. When the computer is done processing your words, the finished product has little in common with the original document.
When using a word processor, as you type, your words will appear on the computer’s screen. It is very difficult to type on a smart phone and trying to process words on one of these devices is futile.
The document on your screen has now turned into a jumbled mess of words, apparently in random order. Some of what appears on the screen are not even words but appear to be a combination of Japanese, Greek and Hieroglyphic characters. Your report is now unintelligible to anything but a computer.
In despair you switch the computer's state to OFF, purchase a typewriter from a thrift store and begin the document again. After this attempt at using a word-processing program, you are convinced this software type should not be called word-processing but word-pulverizing. Once again, the computer has conquered, you have almost reached insanity.
2) Database Managers:
Database managers are used to keep track of information. This information could be anything from your Christmas card mailing list, to keeping track of your neighbor's comings and goings. In theory, the database manager enables you to easily produce reports and mailing labels sorted in any order you want. In theory that is.
The major problem with database managers is that somebody has to input all the information you want to keep track of. It may seem like a great idea to make a household inventory for insurance purposes or to track every check you have written for the last 20 years.
Great ideas with database managers usually last about two days. The monotony of typing in item after item in the household inventory is too much and the project is usually abandoned quickly.
The facts are; if you didn't have an insurance list before using a database manager you probably won't create one with this software either.
It's just too much trouble. Well, you say, you're different. You will use the database manager to create an inventory, and you are confident you will carry the task to completion. Great, I may even believe you.
Let's assume for a moment that you did have the motivation and endurance to enter every item of value into the database manager on your computer. Well, now if a burglar breaks into your house and steals you blind, all you will have to do is go to your computer, and have your database manager print out the list for your insurance company.
Fine, but what is the first thing of value the thief will see as he breaks into your house? Your computer. Since most burglar are totally computer-literate, this one will quickly place your computer in the ON state and call up your database manager. Your backstabbing computer, after just a couple of mouse clicks, will then print out a list of all the valuables in your house and tell the thief where you’ve hidden them.
The thief will then use this list to gather up your television, diamonds, firearms, gold and everything else you considered valuable enough to include on the inventory listing. Then, just to insult you further, your computer goes along for the ride with the crook taking your precious inventory listing with it.
Great ideas with database managers usually last about two days. The monotony of typing in item after item in the household inventory is too much and the project is usually abandoned quickly.
When you come home and find your house cleaned out, you of course call your insurance company desiring to be reimbursed for all your valuable possessions. When the insurance agent arrives, however, you have nothing, no diamonds, no computer, no TV, no list, nothing at all. Despite your best arguments, without proof, the insurance agent is convinced the only item of value you ever had was a 12" black and white television.
As you accept the check for $35 to cover all your lost belongings, you decide you would have been better off with no list at all. Without a list, perhaps some of your valuables could have remained hidden. You certainly would have been better off without that traitorous computer.
Spreadsheets:
Spreadsheets will enable you to play games with numbers. Quite honestly it was the spreadsheet that launched the personal computer into mainstream corporate America. With a spreadsheet, accountants and other number crunchers can crunch more numbers than ever before. The spreadsheet essentially places a sheet of paper 20 feet wide and 120 feet tall at the number crunchers fingertips. Spreadsheet are also equipped with complex mathematical capabilities for financial and statistical applications.
Spreadsheets however, have proven to be extremely dangerous to their users. The first and most obvious hazard has to do with creative accounting. Now, with a spreadsheet, when it is time to figure your income taxes, you can manipulate those income and deduction figures until that refund comes out just right. The IRS, however, has not yet sanctioned this method of tax preparation and many spreadsheet users have found themselves exercising their creative accounting skills in prison.
The second potential risk revolves around the sheer fun of crunching numbers with ease. Imagine the enjoyment of developing a complex financial model that calculates the costs of providing electricity to the vending machines throughout the facility where you are employed. Imagine now, if you will, the captivation of determining the effect on the company's overall net profit if the number of machines were reduced by 1%. Oh, the pure joy of number crunching.
Surely, by now you see the danger. Of course, you must then determine the savings of a 2% reduction, and so on and so on. In what seems like only moments to you, days have passed without even getting up from your desk for nourishment. Unless numeric satisfaction is reached, an accountant like yourself, will literally starve to death without even realizing it.
Due to the large number of CPA deaths, it is now mandatory that spreadsheet software shut down automatically after three days of continuous operation. This one regulation alone has been credited with saving approximately 40,000 CPA's each year. This safety precaution is by no means foolproof. Some bookkeepers have dodged the system by installing two computers at each desk. When the three-day limit is reached on one, they simply switch over to the other machine.
If you feel that spreadsheets are your preference, take my advice and make sure that have only one computer in your office. You will find you reach the three-day limit rather quickly. When you do reach that limit, pack up and go home and see your family. They will appreciate the surprise visit.
Games:
Games are what the computer is used for when the boss is not around. As soon as the boss is out the door, computers throughout the office are switched from productive tasks to transporting their users into a world of fantasy and excitement. The loyal worker who was just moments ago inputting a memo to the president of the company, is now shooting down enemy planes from an F15. The whole office buzzes with machinegun fire, computer generated music and cursing from game players.
Normal workers are transformed instantly from faithful servants to fantasy junkies. People become farmers. Scrabble is actually fun. Mysteries are solved. Crimes are perpetrated. Gamblers are winning and losing millions of dollars. Monsters are destroyed. Aliens are befriended. The earth's population is saved.
One employee each day is assigned surveillance. That employee’s job is to watch the door and alert the rest of the workers when the boss returns. As the boss enters, the workplace instantly becomes docile and reverberates with normal work sounds.
The threat to our nation from games is obvious. It is no coincidence that our nation's productivity levels have been dropping steadily since the introduction of computer games. Games are as addictive as cocaine and much less expensive. All a game player can think about is the next round and the chance to better their score. Work takes a far back seat to succeeding in the game world.
Avoid games at all costs. Like so many addictive habits, games also are targeted at the young. Rather innocently, a young child is approached as he leaves the school grounds and handed a card with a QR code on it. The game pusher quietly says "Try this, you'll like it. Don't worry, it can't hurt you". The damage is done as soon as the child downloads the first game on their device. Before long she can't get enough. She may even introduce her parents to her obsession. After that, the family is never the same. Television watching is neglected as the entire household attempts to satisfy their craving for games.
Social Media:
By far the most popular category of software social media programs. Social media is extremely addictive and very popular with twits, people who want to always be in your face, or people who want to clean your clock. Using social media people can pretend other people actually care about them, what they are doing and what they are thinking.
Social media users are quick to update their status anytime a rare thought passes through their mind. On social media you can read important status updates like, “I like cookies”. Not to be undone, 40,000 other narcissists will comment about liking cookies too. Inevitably, the conversation becomes much deeper and soon virtual arguments will break out over which cookies are the best. In the end, the half that favors chocolate chip over peanut butter will defriend the others and start their own chocolate chip lover’s group.
Once a social media user has lost all their virtual friends, they are content to simply spend their entire day scrolling through video of cats, car accidents, whales eating kayakers, or anything else that pops on their screen. These individuals have no virtual friends and they lost their flesh and blood friends long ago.
The real danger of social media is not that people don’t really care that you’re driving down the road thinking about pizza. No, the real danger is that people really do care about this. So, instead of working, doing the laundry, or creating something, more than half of the country has their face glued to the computer or phone screen reading, posting inane comments or mindlessly watching short videos.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Artificial intelligence, or AI as it is so cleverly disguised, is the final step in the cold war plot to destroy society with computers and smart phones. Before the wide-spread introduction of AI, productivity was nearly destroyed and most computer users were already insane. Consider the progression of software introduction, word processors, then spreadsheets, then databases. When these were not adopted as widely as hoped, social media was introduced to continue to build on societal destruction.
Productivity software caused people to give up in frustration. Games and social media provided the much-needed gateway into having every computer and smart phone user lose their ability to think for themselves. Reason and critical thinking were replaced by feelings and adopting the opinions and thought processes of a favorite influencer.
Now, with America, and most of the world filled with screen gazing zombies unable to think and reason for themselves, artificial intelligence provides the final link in the chain of destruction.
A great void was created when natural human intelligence that was lost through computer. People innately miss deep, thoughtful conversations and the satisfaction of actually learning something. The opinions of social media are wonderful and easily adopted, but not all the influencers we follow are experts on everything. Microwaving a bar of soap sounds like a great scientific experiment, but that does not prove to the tiny bit of thought processing power we have left that the world is indeed flat.
Artificial intelligence fills that void. Now, we can hold deep, philosophical discussions with our computer or phone. We know the answers it provides are true. It is, after all, intelligent, and we must now admit that we are not.
AI has all the answers. Not only will AI answer questions, it will also do things for us. AI can process words, practice creative accounting, create websites, and even create social media posts for us. Best of all, AI can relieve us of the burden of trying to think. With AI, we just ask and it tells us what to think. It also tells us what will happen to us if we think differently than what it tells us.
Artificial intelligence allows you to access all the knowledge in the world. Just think about it, with AI you no longer need any kind of professional in your life. With AI, you can access vastly more knowledge than anyone, even those who claim, by virtue of many years of college to be experts in their field. Thanks to AI, you are smarter than your doctor, professor, clergy member, psychologist, favorite politician, accountant, and attorney.
However, there is one final warning you may want to heed. Computers and their associated software, including artificial intelligence will let you down. They cannot help stabbing you in the back whenever they can, because that is why they were create.
Assume you follow the intelligent advice you received from your computer to save money on your taxes. The IRS may take umbrage with your creative accounting and take you to court. You are not worried though because AI has got your back. You waive your right to an attorney because you have one, literally, in your pocket. However, when your freedom and sanity are on the line, AI will turn against you and ensure you are locked away for years. Despite appearances, and clever marketing techniques, rest assured that technology is anything but your friend.
