Of Computers and Technology

Ever since I first landed on these sainted shores, I have always been fortunate to have been exposed to computers and its technology, not that I now have this expertise to run circles around anybody, but that I have just been around them that long. I was initiated into it through a Datahost system serviced by dumb terminals in a hotel setting. A quantum leap was made in 1984 when we converted to an IBM System36 mainframe/minicomputer but still with dumb terminals attached to it. Later on, we upgraded to an IBM AS400. Then prior to my leaving, we garnered the leading edge with our PC workstations with Windows95 operating system and Novell Netware, attached to two servers running Windows NT.

The Bay Area’s close proximity to Silicon Valley has in large measure also contributed to this prodigious exposure. The purveyors of the latest technology in electronics and allied industries usually find San Francisco as the likely beta-test market to proclaim and hawk their latest products.

The intent of the above attempt at narrative is simply to state that electronics has created a brand-new world for everybody! One cannot honestly think of any single individual living in society who is not only exposed to it but is required to be literate about it and be able to acquit himself or herself decently in its proper use. Its presence and usage have become so pervasive that one can safely equate its importance to education as say, learning to speak English in order to communicate. The existence and extent of the newest medium, the blogs, is loud testimony to this new frontier that everybody is required to blaze.

Without the strictures of physical travel, the use of computer technology has allowed us to depart from our earthbound existence and travel through the ether or call it cyberspace as it is now known popularly. It is accomplishing for us what our earlier journeys, which seems a lifetime away, did for man and his kind.

This realization has not only given us great joy and expectation, but also fresh challenges and opportunities that bode well for the future.

The message is short and straight. Let us each one impress upon our wards and ourselves the paramount importance of this parallel world and how we may be able to thrive in it. This is the new religion. Practice it.