StudentScholarships.org - Computers and Technology
The decade of the 80's saw an explosion in computer technology and computer usage that deeply changed our society. Computers are now part of everyday life, they are in their simplest form a digital watch or more complexly computers manage power grids, telephone networks, and the money of the world.
Henry Grunwald, former US ambassador to Austria best describes the computer's functions,
"It enables the mind to ask questions, find answers, stockpile knowledge, and devise plans to move mountains, if not worlds."
Society has embraced the computer and accepted it for its tremendous powers that can be used for business, education, research, and warfare.
Computers though have not been a failure in businesses; they allow information to be shared very quickly. The home office is a product of computers; people can work conveniently from home instead of going to their offices. This has not become very popular due to the lack of touch between people, t he loss of contact. It is the human factor that helps to make business run, the random thought that saves the day; something a computer is incapable of doing. Computers may help quicken business, but they will never replace people, only reduce their knowledge or creativity by automating the process.
One of the most recognizable figures of software design is Bill Gates, the president and founder of Microsoft Corporation. Microsoft has a basic monopoly on the computer world. They write the operating system and the applications to run the system. And when everyone catches up, they change the version. Bill Gates started the company in the early 1980's with DOS, or Disk Operating System, which just recently was made obsolete by Windows 95. Bill Gates has now just ventured into the Internet and is now tangling with Netscape, the company with the Internet monopoly. Netscape gives away its software for free to people who want the basic version, but a version with all of t he bells and whistles can be purchased. Microsoft is hard pressed to win the Internet battle, but will take a sizable chunk of Netscape business. Bill Gates will likely keep running the software industry with his recent purchase of Lotus, a popular spreadsheet he further cornered the market with.
Computers are one of the most important items society possesses today. The computer will be deeply imbedded in peoples lives even more when the technology progresses more and more. Businesses will become heavily dependent as video conferencing and working from home become increasingly more feasible, so businesses will break down from large buildings into teams that communicate electronically. Schools may be taught by the best teachers possible and software may someday replace teachers. In the workforce, computer engineers will be a highly sought after commodity.
The Internet will reach into lives, offering an escape from reality and an information source that is ex tremely vast. Hopefully society will further embrace the computer, as a tool that must be tended to and assisted, not left to do its work alone. Even so computers will always be present, because the dreams of today are made with computers, planned on computers, and then assembled by computers. The only thing the computer can't do is dream, at least right now.