READING COMPREHENSION: COMPUTER HOME APPLICATIONS

Home Applications


In 1977, Ken Olsen was president of the Digital Equipment Corporation, then the number two computer vendor in the world (after IBM). When asked why Digital was not going after the personal computer market in a big way, he said: ''There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home.'' History showed otherwise and Digital no longer exists. Why do people buy computers for home use? Initially, for word processing and games, but in recent years that picture has changed radically. Probably the biggest reason now is for Internet access.
Some of the more popular uses of the Internet for home users are as follows:
1. Access to remote information.
2. Person-to-person communication.
3. Interactive entertainment.
4. Electronic commerce.
Access to remote information comes in many forms. It can be surfing the World Wide Web for information or just for fun. Information available includes the arts, business, cooking, government, health, history, hobbies, recreation, science, sports, travel, and many others. Fun comes in too many ways to mention, plus some ways that are better left unmentioned.
Many newspapers have gone on-line and can be personalized. For example, it is sometimes possible to tell a newspaper that you want everything about corrupt politicians, big fires, scandals involving celebrities, and epidemics, but no football, thank you. Sometimes it is even possible to have the selected articles downloaded to your hard disk while you sleep or printed on your printer just before breakfast. As this trend continues, it will cause massive unemployment among 12-year-old paperboys, but newspapers like it because distribution has always been the weakest link in the whole production chain.
The next step beyond newspapers (plus magazines and scientific journals) is the on-line digital library. Many professional organizations, such as the ACM (http://www.acm.org/) and the IEEE Computer Society (www.computer.org), already have many journals and conference proceedings on-line. Other groups are following rapidly. Depending on the cost, size, and weight of book-sized notebook computers, printed books may become obsolete. Skeptics should take note of the effect the printing press had on the medieval illuminated manuscript.
All of the above applications involve interactions between a person and a remote database full of information.
The second broad category of network use is person-to-person communication, basically the 21st century's answer to the 19th century's telephone. E-mail is already used on a daily basis by millions of people all over the world and its use is growing rapidly. It already contains audio and video as well as text and pictures.

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