leo fernandes, the recursive, kernel-centric, assembly-hacking thinker when
it comes to philosophy, asks
"What does it mean when you call someone 'computer savvy'?
for, thus spake leo: i could point out professors in academia who would be
totally lost with a win doze machine, even though they know how to work on
super-high-end, unix-based or legacy OS based machines running perhaps on
big-iron hardware.
i could also point out lots of people who used computers in pioneering ways
and achieved amazing feats, but were lost on win doze or dos, 'cause they
only knew macintosh.
okay, so in my humble opinion, who is computer-savvy?
proposed answer: anyone who understands the underlying concepts of operating
systems, hardware architectures, networks, software, and data, and can both
interpolate and extraopolate that knowledge to understand any specific
instance of computing systems.
in contrast, a computer-user is one who merely feeds in or retrieves data
from a computer system, without understanding its architecture or underlying
concepts. example: data-entry operators, young boys and girls entering cafe
bills behind counters, or top-level management guys just focussed on
retrieving pertinent data at the proverbial press of a button.
so, here's the next riddle:
er, what would you call a computer?
[and naturally, the above definitions may fit in for 'computer-savvy']
:-)
LL
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