Driving without a license...

It is a fact that we do with computers what we wouldn't dare doing with cars, i.e., allow the person to buy a car and starting using it without knowing how to drive...

I am confronted with so many basic questions from friends and acquaintances that I wonder how they manage to get along with their computers. Probably they don't, which is a real pity. The personal computer became an indispensable tool in every home, just as Bill Gates dreamed of. The problem is that if schools are now preparing the young generation to properly use a computer, nothing much is being done for the adults who got caught in the technological hype and didn't have this opportunity.

The other day, for example, a dear friend of mine asked me if I knew of a good OCR program to capture the text he had scanned to a JPG image. Nobody ever explained to him that if he wanted to scan some text to be OCR'd, he should have saved it as TIFF instead, not only because it offers lossless compression but because most of the OCR packages prefer this format. For him, JPG became the synonym of any image, regardless what kind of image it is. I am certain that he doesn't know the difference between JPG, PNG, GIF, TIFF, and so on...

This friend is a retired engineer, very intelligent and still very sharp, but never had the opportunity to go through a basic introduction to computers where the different image formats and their utilisations are explained. It is a flaw of our system that produces high tech equipment and forgets to initiate the public on how to make the best out of it.

The same happens with digital cameras, for example. How many people buy the most expensive DSLR just to put it in AUTO and use it as a snapshot camera? Do the manufacturers really think that putting a high powered digital camera accompanied by a flimsy user guide in the hands of a snapshooter will transform him or her into an amateur photographer?

The system is inadequate because it does not provide much choice in introductory courses. There are books, but apparently most of the people ignore this fact or are not willing to invest some of their time in self-learning. I would love to see the television playing a better educational role in this area, but I believe this is a dream that, contrary to Bill Gates', will never come true.

I guess that, with regard to computers, we are experiencing a transitional period and this problem will disappear by itself in a few decades when at least all those who went to school will know how to properly handle a personal computer.  Then we, the so-called "experts", will be left alone.  In the meantime I keep helping my friends with pleasure and patience, but the snag is that they get used to this treatment and will never learn, as they should, how to take care of themselves...