As I sit in front of the desktop, using the PC to work on this article, words appear on the computer screen as fast as I can keep my fingers dancing on the keyboard.
When thoughts are put into words and keyed in, they are automatically strung into sentences in a neat and proper format, paragraph by paragraph. If I don’t like what I’ve written, or have chosen a wrong word, it can be changed or erased, without leaving any trace of my mistake.
All I need is to press the delete button and replace the unwanted word with a new one. I don’t need an eraser or correction fluid. In fact, I can cut, copy and past any word, sentence, paragraph and even the whole story if I wanted to do so.
I can play the same trick with an article or a whole page or make the words either big and bold, or small and cute in any style I desire.
And I’m just using my index fingers to jab at different keys with big letters marked on them. There are, of course, scores of other keys whose existence does not really bother me.
Now I am on the sixth paragraph of this article. Frankly, if I had used a typewriter, I would have yanked out and thrown away at least 20 sheets of paper just to get the right intro or, in journalistic jargon, a good lead.
Welcome to the computer age. For those who have crossed the digital divide, the ICT is simply amazing. We are living in an era blessed with so many wonderful inventions and innovations that life has become so much easier.
Many of my generation began our trade before the birth of the computer. Our tool then was a typewriter, either Olivetti, Underwood, Olympia or Hermes. They were heavy and messy. The portable versions only appeared later. The ribbons came either in black, and red and black. Oh yes, I miss the smell of the ink!
When reporters were working furiously on their machines, with editors cursing in the background, the smoke-filled newsroom came alive. We knew the deadline was near and the big stories had to be hammered out for the following day’s front page, with screaming headlines!
Of course, besides those messy ashtrays and empty beer bottles on the desk, one could also see balls of crushed paper strewn all over the floor by desperate reporters struggling to write a good copy.
Those were the days when cars didn’t have air-conditioners, television was in black and white, and aerogrammes were used to send mails to distant friends. The cell-phone was still light years away, as was the Internet.
Coming back to my PC, it is such a fantastic gadget that, with the proper software, not only enables me to write, correct, check spelling and grammatical errors but also save and store whatever I’ve written in a file, a CD or a pendrive and I can retrieve the data or information anytime I want.
The article can be passed on via email to anyone connected with the system anywhere in the world in seconds, making ordinary mail or even fax quite redundant. And all this can be done in a jiffy, while sitting comfortably in front of a desktop in an air-conditioned environment with a cup of coffee on my desk.
Not only that. In between writing, I can also surf, listen to music, watch a movie and chat with friends via the net and I believe I’m just using a fraction of what a PC can do.
I just cleaned up my mail-box which was filled to the brim with letters from relatives, friends, business contacts and total strangers. They included mails from a long queue of very generous people who insisted on sharing their hidden wealth or heritage with me because they said I could be trusted.
Others were trying to sell some miracle treatments that can either enhance my brain-power or enlarge a certain part of my anatomy. Wow, aren’t we living in interesting times?
Of course, one can also keep abreast of the latest news developments by going online. The Chinese used to say that a xiu cai (a Chinese scholar who has passed a certain grade in Mandarin exam) is knowledgeable about the world without even having to step out the door. With the Internet, we can do much better than those ancient scholars. The flip side is trying to differentiate between the truth, half truth and untruth.
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