Computer, Connector or Communicator – What Is The Name for You?
March 27, 2009 |
I sometimes feel that we use way too many words that don’t really fit the objects and substances they are intended to describe. Like the word “computer” – have you thought about how inappropriate it already is? Really, when was the last time when you actually did some computing on your computer?
Personally I can hardly remember when I computed anything on my notebook – only some basic tasks using the standard Windows calculator and some tax-related calculations done automatically for me by TurboTax. Only rarely I have to illustrate a presentation or a post with a graph and use Excel to do some calculations for me – but that happens too rarely to be considered the major and most important task for my machine.
Otherwise I don’t really think my personal computer is about computing any more. And the new tools that automate pretty much everything make life even easier for our computers preventing them from doing calculations: like when I need to convert some amount from one currency to another, it is way much easier to type in the Google search field something like “1000 dollars in euro” and get the reply instantly instead of checking the currency rate for today and actually calculating it myself.
My guess is that the situation is very much like this for many of us as the computer has long received enough new tasks not to need it to calculate anything – instead we are engaged on a daily basis in numerous activities that rarely have anything to do with figures and calculations. So it looks like it is not quite fair to name a computer after only one of the tasks it is intended for – especially since for many it is not even the major task any more.
To me personally a better word for computer is simply a “machine” as I’ve been using it for ages for any more or less complicated piece of equipment used for business – be it a printing machine or a large numeric control machine worth a million dollars. Actually I don’t think a computer is really very different – it is also a piece of equipment to me that has some specific tasks of its own that allow me (and millions of people around the globe) to do a job. But since a “machine” is probably way too generalist for many, I believe we could easily come up with a better term to actually demonstrate the real purpose of the machine.
When I asked my readers here a simple question “Do you remember what we did on our computers when we had no internet?” I got plenty of answers mentioning things like computer games and BBS but the general agreement was that these days when we don’t have internet connection we feel that our computers are pretty useless and we can not come up with anything to do with the machines until the connection is back.
I often feel the frustration myself as I don’t really live in the most connected city in the world and here losing a connection usually means leaving your home or your office and staying out of some downtown public places with WiFi hot spots (for a fee in the vast majority of cases as well) and while I can always do some extra writing that will go actually much better without constantly checking Twitter, FriendFeed and my email accounts, still the notebook looks like only half-useful when disconnected.
I think that must mean that for many of us a computer has already turned into a device intended to connect us to the world wide web with the web opening the doors to do whatever you are supposed to do – be it work- or entertainment-related. Where I always have at least a dozen of applications running I know people who only use their browsers and pretty much nothing else. These people manage to do all their tasks online whatever their job responsibilities are and are quite happy with the situation – though they must be heavily damaged when out of connection. For these people a computer can probably be renamed into a “connector” and this word will reflect the true purpose of their machines, I think.
Also there are people these days who basically use their machines for communications and pretty much nothing else. When one’s job is only about emailing and IMing people to agree on something and the distractions include chatting away on Twitter, Facebook or FriendFeed these people obviously have nothing to do without the internet connection. They may have additional applications installed – like Twhirl to handle the chatting and various IM and email clients – but the purpose of all these applications is usually to communicate things back and forth from the computer to the world wide web. For this group of people I’d rename a computer into a “communicator” as it only serves the purpose of communication for them – something like an advanced phone that also offers functionality to discover new people and engage in discussions with them.
My personal opinion is that the portion of people taking their machines as connectors or communicators should already be much larger than the number of people thinking of their computers as actually computers and using them as such. I may be wrong so opinions are welcome on what you think you computer actually is for you.
