No Knowledge of Computers = No Future?

It’s funny how thoughts and memories from the past occasionally pop up in your head without any warning. Recently, I remembered a conversation with a coworker about my intent to learn more about computing. After I told him this, he said something which I found to be remarkable at the time, but even more remarkable now. He said, “If you don’t have knowledge of computers, you don’t have a future.” This is simply a paraphrase, but I think I captured the spirit of what he said.

As I mention in many of my posts, and it’s likely my readers are tired of hearing me say it, computers are ubiquitous, pervasive, and, even, invasive. This seems like common knowledge, and it is common knowledge, but how often do people think of the repercussions of this commonly known fact? Computers are everywhere and they are heavily integrated in most workplaces, organizations, homes, etc. Computers run our society’s infrastructure, our entertainment, our jobs, our…everything. If you are averse to learning how to operate a computer, then you are quite limited in our society.

The average person, if he is to have at least some success in his working career and life in general, must have at least a rudimentary understanding of how to use a computer. User-interfaces, however, take much of the burden off the average person, which is a good thing, to an extent.

So, I have to agree with my coworker’s sentiment. If you are to operate a computer, you need to have some knowledge of it. And, since computers increasingly rule our world, not knowing how to use a computer means you don’t have much of a future.

 

After digging through my memory banks a bit more, more of that conversation resurfaced. I think I may have misinterpreted what my coworker said because I simply misremembered the situation. But, I’ll leave the above paragraphs in this post because they are important and, more importantly, I like them.

Now, after further reflection, my coworker made his remark after I informed him about my interest in learning about programming. Perhaps, by his comment, he meant that if a person doesn’t have knowledge of programming, or other, more specialized, computer knowledge, then, that person doesn’t have much of a future.

Well now, that seems to be more open to debate.

So, how about it? Does a person who doesn’t have a specialized knowledge of computers have a future? I’ll go with “yes” on this one. A person who doesn’t have special knowledge of computers still has a future. Today, a person doesn’t need to have specialized knowledge of computers in order to use a computer. Thanks to all those user-friendly interfaces, a technologically-illiterate person can survive in the future just as well as the technological know-it-all next-door. Now, the technological know-it-all may have an edge on the illiterate, however, the illiterate can still survive and thrive (likely thanks to the works of the know-it-alls). And, to be fair, the tech-geeks do have better career prospects than most folks, but this doesn’t mean that only the tech-geek will flourish in the future.

The future has a place for us all. Though, for the technologically-illiterate, that place may not be as glamorous as the place occupied by the know-it-alls. So there may be some truth to my coworker’s sentiment. I guess the lesson to take away from all this is that, if you want to live the high-life in the future, then get to working on the foundations of that technical knowledge right now. Your future will shine in proportion to the amount of work you spend polishing your tech-skills, today. Get to it.