Computer Information
The fascinating thing about computer information is that it is
growing at exponential speed. So although more people than
ever before know more about computers than ever before,
the gap between what is known and what there is to know
is greater than ever before.

In the very early years of computers, the average person
barely knew they existed. A small handful of IBM and
government scientists worked on huge computers such
as UNIVAC. They were the only ones who knew anything
about computers -- but each one of them knew everything
important there was to know.

Since that time, computer technologies have multiplied and
expanded and branched out and networked and built upon
each succeeding advance so much so that nobody in the world
can have the same total grasp of computer information that
those few scientists had back in 1950.

Back in 1960, if you knew either Fortran or COBOL, you knew
half of all the important languages. Probably many geeks knew
both. How many computer scientists, let alone average programmers,
know all important languages now?

It'd be next to impossible. If you had the time to study them
all, you'd have no time to actually develop programs and so
in a practical sense you wouldn't know them anyway -- since
book knowledge and creating programs are not the same thing.

Once upon a time techies were mainly programmers, with s
ome engineers who actually researched and designed new
hardware. Now programming itself is considered a low level
computer skill. There are still computer researchers and
designers, but also network engineers, database administrators,
security specialists, web masters, designers and developers etc,
plus advanced people who plan out the flows of information using
technologies that go far beyond the traditional flow chart.

This is good, because although the average person in our society
knows the basics of how computers work (and many know how to
build, fix and repair them) and many others know how to design
web sites, develop programs, use such programs as Microsoft Word,
hook up home networks etc) there is much more room in our
economy for techies -- both with regular jobs and self-employed -- than
ever before. If nothing else, the more computer technologies
there for the average person to learn, the greater demand
there will be for instructors to teach classes in those
technologies -- or for computer consultants to do the work -- for
both consumers and businesses.

So there are now many more computer jobs and businesses
available than in the old days when only a tiny number of
scientists had computer jobs.

In effect, the growth of computer information parallels our
capitalist system.

Once upon a time, a handful of people were rich and everybody else
had nothing.

With the overall growth of wealth, those who are rich have gotten
enormously wealthy (think: Bill Gates), but the masses of people
are much better off. The gap between the wealthy and the poor
is greater than ever before, but America's "poor" in 2004 live
much better than the poor did in 1950, and so do the middle
classes of each period.

So just as I cheer on the extremely wealthy (I will never have
Bill Gates' 50 billion dollars, but he and other computer
professionals have made it much easier for me to make
$200,000), so also I cheer on the many advances we are
making in computer information.
- posted by RickStooker @ 1:27 PM