Across the pond

I wrote the headline before I did my research for the article. But since I am a reasonably honest and well trained journalist, I am letting the readers into the secret of what is going on in my mind, as I write the article. So I start at the end.

The age is which we are living is the Age of Babel. The OED is still in the shed, while we get our bookshelvelves made. But I have at hand the Reader’s Digest Dictionery, which is one of the better products of American consumer capitalism.

It tells me that Babel was a city punished by God, (a bloke who both Tony Blair, his arch enemy, Gordon Brown, George W Bush, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama say they believe in). God, who in those days went under the name of Jehovah, got very angry when mere human beings tried to buiild a tower to reach the heavens. So Jehovah punished them for their arrogance. He punished his children by waving his magic wand and making it impossible for the builders of Tower to undertand each other’s language.

Game, set, point to God.

But the reality of the world in which we now live in 2008 is that the majority cannot understand a word of what computer people are saying; be they techies, or nerds or distingished computer scientists.

But what the majority do not know, is the the huge and growing numbers who know the language of computing, are not telling them the whole truth, because they have to pay their mortgages, etc.

The reality is that they have been so busy building their Towers to the heavens (or towards lots ol lolly on earth) that they cannot communicate with their fellow computer wizards, who have developed other languages.

So the ‘secret’ which computer wizards rarely tell the world, is that they are as almost as helpless, in speaking the language of their rival’s computing, as those who know nothing of computing at all.
So a computer man who speaks Windows can’t communicate with a chap who speaks AppleMac. As he can’t speak Chines or even French.

In the last few weeks I have had two quite different, but very serious problems. In seeking to solve them I dashed off a series of emails to people I knew, who, surprise, surprise were mostly men.

Of the very few who replied, none of them addressed the questions I was asking.

In both instances I managed to get The Daily Novel back on the newstands. But with the help of two women, neither of whom I knew, and whose expertise is quite different in terms of computer languages. But both of them were not consumed by male arrogance. They actuarlly read what I wrote and made helpful suggestions.

They have a difficult time themselves, because the world of computing is male dominated. And the men who rule it, are concerned to rise to the top of their particular villages of computing.

Such as Microsoft, AppleMac, WordPress, Google, Adobe Fhotoshop, MySpace, etc, etc.

This means nothing to my non-computer literate readers. But it is dominating their world.

The non-computer literate are told that if they have problems, they should call in a computer expert.

But the reality is that there now many highly developed computer languages.

So if students are going to learn the language of computing, they need to spend as much effort learnig each one of them as they needed to learn to speak just one foreign language.

You don’t learn Chinese, in ten easy lessons. And, you don’t learn WordPress in ten easy lessons. Or Miccrosot Word.

To conclude this post, I come back to Marshall McCluhan. Follow this link in Wikipeda, because this man who was being slaughtered by most of the distingiuished academics in the field, when I arrived at City Uninersity, London in 1979, had something important to say.

Those who criticised him, were mostly pygmies. And he died in 1980, long before the Global Village of the internet became a reality.

But he was right. And his many cricics were wrong.

The global village has arrived. But not the global village of his dreams.

It looks more like the Tower of Babel,.

But hen he was an over-optimistic American. Newertheless, today’s students should read his books. He was raising the important issues lond before most. And his world has now arrived, over twenty years late, and not quite as he envisaged it.

But McLuhan concentrated on matters computing.

Perhaps the problem is in another sphere. If the Bible had been written by a woman, perhaps she would not have focussed on ‘the forbidden fruit’. Perhaps she would have been more concerned that Adam listen to what she had to say.

Hillary Clinton is not going to win the US Presidential race. Not because she is a woman. But because she is a woman who has made her way in life by showing that she can be as macho as the men.

Women of the world unite.

You have nothing to lose buy your present positions on the doormats of history, which you are desparately trying to keep clean, after the men have walked in witth their muddied boots.

You have minds of your own. But only a few of the males of the species are listening to what you have to say.