self-taught computing

My first interaction with the computer was to wait in the hall way for the other group of students to finish up their project.

Then it’s our turn to come in with punch cards in hand (Statistics 101).

Students at the time would rather be wearing their Texas Instrument pocket calculators in a holster, ready to draw, at the cash register. Very Wild West).

Then came 1984, the Mac.

Now, nobody turns head when seeing a computer, maybe, until we see Watson, IBM latest supercomputer,  play Jeopardy against human (scheduled to appear on TV next month sometime).

People just adopt en mass this tactile technology (key board, mouse, web cam and headset to point and click) without much schooling.

This is an under-reported story about spontaneous adoption (via internet cafe, work place, library and home.) People learn on their own to Search (and sometimes destroy – I crashed my computer once). It’s as if finally the gods must be crazy (the coke bottle got tossed around and wore out its usefulness after some damage to the tribe).

People never:

– take typing class

– go to computer class

– learn how to spell

Yet there they are. Everyone is using the machine,  as portable as TI calculator, but X times the computing power.

And it does not stop there. AI is perfecting itself, not just to clean the ketchup spill on the floor, but Oil Spill in the Ocean floor.

Just think about Frederick Taylor and Henry Ford (they got their inspiration from observing butchers chopping at dead animals, and tabulated the steps), then multiply this waste-elimination factor by a thousand. Then we might come close to today’s supply chain, RFID, containerizing and port operation streamlining.

Country will respond to bids the way company does (Vietel won a World Bank bid to rebuild Haiti telecom infrastructure).  The world all of the sudden got so small, if not flattened.

All thanks to modern-day technology, which are mostly self-taught. Out of Billion users, modern-day equivalence of Edison’s trial bulbs, will come an audible “Come here Mr Watson” at some point. That’s when we as human race propel to the next stage of growth. Can’t wait to draw, oops, to take my phone from the holster when I got the call.