Murphy's letter from Edinburgh

 

Moving Forward

Computing and surfing the Internet has become a whole new experience with the upgrading of the speeds of modems.  Technology has moved very fast since I came on to the Internet for the first time last year.  And it's going to get even faster in the future.

For businesses this is great news, because they will be able to send and receive information even faster than they have ever done before.

When I first took up computing 13 years ago, computers were slow and very sluggish, but it was a step in the right direction.  Once the home computer had been invented, it could be improved on.  And that's exactly what's happened.

The growth in the Internet has been stunning within the last few years.  Remember the 56Kb modem?  Well forget it, because I can't imagine anyone using one now that the Internet has been upgraded.

Yet that was only last year.  I went on to broadband around about June last year after trying the Internet for the first time for 3 months on a 56Kb modem.  Having been upgrade this year again for the same money that I was already paying, I am stunned by what you can do with this faster speed.

The Internet has now moved in to the 21st century, and I'm quite sure we are just at the beginning of the Internet revolution.  The future of computers and the Internet can only move forward, and the beneficiaries are the people using it.

The Americans were more computer literate than what the British people were at the beginning, and that may have been because we were slow to embrace the new technology.  As an educational tool the Internet has been great for all ages, and there will be no turning back.  It's all moving forward very fast now.

A lot of people worldwide are now embracing this technology, and it's opening new doors for many people depending what they do with their computers.  Of course it is easy to be drawn in by many sites such as gambling, games along with the many other sites.  But that is what the Internet is all about.  It's about choices.

You as the individual can make the choice as to what sites appeal to you.  There are now so many sites to select from for your own needs, it's becoming even easier to get even the most obscure of information.

In fact some of the older sites look very dated now, and I tend to think that the technology has moved a bit fast for them and they've not quite realised the full potential that broadband can offer them.

One of the biggest growths in Internet use has been by the middle aged to the elderly who have grabbed this relatively new technology with open arms by writing newsletters, setting up campaign groups on pensions and almost anything else that take their fancy.  This technology has opened a whole new world for them, and they know how to use it all for the right reasons.

For a lot of these people, the education system of their time was maybe not the best. Their working career had already been selected for them by the time they left school. Some were directed into manual jobs, some to be tradesmen, while very few were considered good enough to go on to further education by going to college or university.  But then the technology of this day was not there, so working practices were totally different as were the ideas of that period in time.

I never went to any of these institutions - well not these ones - and over a period of time you  tend become rusty with writing, spelling and other parts of the education you may have considered yourself to be quite good at, and you unfortunately tend to forget some of the skills that you picked up through your days at school.  The education you got is never forgotten, it's because it's not been used to it's full potential for so long.

It's not because that generation were dumb in any way, it was because their full potential was never fully allowed to flourish.  But then they were lucky in many ways, they got a different education.  The ability to see the other side of life, how goods were produced and the ability to talk to ordinary working people where no one was any better than anyone else.  They could work with their brains and hands on the tasks that they were given.  They also became good judges of character and very streetwise.

Now some of this group have taken up the challenges of the 21st century, and they are enjoying every minute of liberating themselves through the use of the Internet and computing.  And that must be one of the best success stories of our time.

Although I must say, thank goodness for the spell check, even though now and again a dictionary at hand is still a good idea.

Written by Andrew Murphy 5 November 2005

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