This mirrors my experiences with these devices which, they say, might, in the form of AI, rule the world. They might do a better job. T’aint sayin’ much. I don’t pretend to know a great deal, but here is my take (and history) with them, such as it is.
Back in the 1960’s when I went to college, we computed stuff using slide rules. Some of these, known as “log log deci trig” cost as much as a cellphone in 2025 currency. I owned a simpler, cheaper device. The fancy (engineering grade) could do natural logarithms, base ten logs, trigonometric functions, and brew a cup of coffee (just kidding). They had serious shortcomings: you had to supply your exponents and decimals; they were only good for 3 significant figures, at best.
Fast forward to my years with FDA. We actually had a couple of Frieden electric calculators!
Near the end of my Federal career (circa 1987) I needed to work, for
the first time, a real PC: a Leading Edge. I retired a few years later, and had a neighbor kid build me one, since I no longer had the use of my Government PC. I had obtained jobs teaching chemistry in high school and college. I taught myself, then classes, how to calculate results obtained from experiments.
Over the next few decades, we bought PC’s , every couple of years, learned some stuff along the way. We learned how to prepare tax returns, utilize banking sites and perform rudimentary searches. We have even downloaded apps. Imagine that!!
During the first year of my stint at Bishop O’Connell, the school administration became aware of car phones. Convenient way to inform of traffic glitches, lateness, and other morning catastrophes. We were encouraged to buy one (at our expense, of course). These were followed by flip phones, then cellphones (I was most fortunate to end my teaching career before these became commonplace).
Then, Al Gore invented the Internet (not really). I always remember, in the early ‘90s, polling parents on Open School Night as to Internet availability in the homes of these (usually quite affluent) folks. The first year: 20 percent; second, about half. By the fourth, almost all. Being anxious to exploit this as a teaching tool, I assigned a project requiring kids to research something using the Internet. At least one wrote something advocating legalization of marihuana. He cited an authoritative source: NORML (National Organizational for the Reform of Marihuana Laws). Aha! Teachable Moment: The Pope may be infallible. But the Internet is not. You need to be able to tell the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. You can’t trust everything that appears on it (and, more than some of the time, even peer-reviewed journals).
I never got to know much about these devices (usually just enough to learn what I needed to do, but not much else). Did, however, get to know some general, useful factoids:
- Kids and younger people know much more about them. When you need to know more, ask one.
- What the hell is a QR code? Did find what an App is.
- Software used to come with comprehensive written instructions. No more. However, the software will usually come to you, sort of.
Brave new world, indeed! As a comic strip once told me, I was born 30 years too soon.
Rogernarc 