Monday, April 7, 2008
Are computers really our friends?
Should we really rely on computers as much as we do in our everyday life? Think about how much of your everyday life revolves around computers. Your communication with teachers, job opportunities, and campus alerts is all processed through e-mail. All your meals, access into buildings around campus, and entry into parking garages are all stored in the barcode on your student ID card, , which computers read. Almost all assignments, papers, blogs, projects, etc. are done through the couple thousand dollar computers that every student must have if they expect to survive this collegiate world. Do we ever worry about what would happen if these computers failed? It hardly ever crosses my mind how reliant my life is on my computer and how I take it for granted. It is not until a problem arises that you realize that computers should not be depended on as much as they are. After working several hours each day this weekend on my Rhetoric paper and never thinking twice how easily my whole paper could disappear. My computer shut off and would only display a plain white screen. That’s when I realized that computers can not be trusted as much as I had trusted them. I took my computer into the Apple store hoping they could recover my paper, but there was nothing they could do. EVERYTHING in my computer was gone. Not just the paper I has worked so hard on to get finished by the rough draft due date, but also all my pictures, iTunes, videos, everything! I learned to be more careful and to always expect the worst when computers are controlling our lives. You can never be too cautious when it comes to something you have no control over. I bought an external hard drive to back my entire computer up to every time new information is added in order to prevent this disaster from occurring again.
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3 comments:
I totally know how you feel. I feel like I am the unluckiest person in the world when it comes to technology. For some reason it always seem to malfunction around me. The strangest things happen to my computer that even the Apple people can’t explain. A couple of days ago a red light turned on inside the hole where you plug in your headphones, and now the speakers on my computer don’t work. Who even knew that there was a light inside there?
Since today’s world is so dependent upon computers, I feel like we have to be so careful to not let anything happen to them or else we are at a total disadvantage. I don’t think that computers are a bad thing, in fact, I think that that they are irreplaceable but there are times when they can be incredibly frustrating.
Everybody, save your work on something besides the computer: Always. Put it in FirstClass, e-mail it to yourself; doesn't SMU have a server you can send it to? Never trust the hard drive and never trust some little plastic flash drive. My co-author and I put all our work in FirstClass, all the drafts of our chapters because that server in Canada never goes down.
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