Some brilliant thoughts by my my father

Dear Jayadev, friends

Sub: On computer usage

Your article on the effects of computer on eyesight has prompted me to go into some reflections.  Some time back in one TV programme I saw a Japanese girl demonstrating calculations on an imaginary abacus.  She was so adept in using the abacus for her day-to- day calculations that she could do away with a real abacus and perform the calculations on an imaginary one.  It was so fascinating to see her fingers doing waltz or Kathak on the imaginary beads on the Abacus hanging on a wall (Actually there was no Abacus hanging on the wall.  Of course, there was a wall).

As we all know an Abacus is an adding machine, calculator and computer.  On second thought, that’s not quite true.  It is just a visual record of the computations going on in the mind of the person using it.  Lots of people in China, Japan etc. still use it.  Not only is it an effective practical tool, but also it is nice to look at.  Nice to hold and touch as the TV commentator would vouch. And the older they get and longer they are handled by a human being, the lovelier they get – smooth and dark and polished.  They will last for a lifetime, they will never need updating, all the software needed to drive them is between your ears, and if they break they, can be fixed even by children with household tools.

The TV commentator had narrated the story of a Japanese-American conglomerate, which moved into the Chinese market in a big way.  In order to demonstrate the value of its small pocket calculator it arranged a contest.  The great Abacus – PC shoot-out.  The guy who won – the one with the Abacus, of course – was a senior clerk for a shipping company. It is true that the operator of the little computer did handle the job of handling the pile of invoices forty-four seconds faster than the mercantile clerk and his Abacus.  But the computer got the wrong answer.  May be the machine operator was in too big a hurry to prove how smart his machine was and fed it fuzzy facts.  Much face was lost.

Now don’t get me wrong.  PCs are here to stay and they have their place.  Machines are not evil themselves.  And a careful, thoughtful man like the shipping clerk might do even better with his pocket calculator than with his Abacus. It’s just that I’m a sentimentalist about the wonders of the human hand and mind.  And when I find that it can still hold its own in the face of the wizardry of the electronic circuitry of little chips (in a chess game the computer loses to the masters most of the time!), I am pleased.  It is comforting to know that some very old and very simple ways of getting from one place to another still work.

Yemmens