A Glorified Calculator

I apologize profusely for accidentally turning off the comments feature last week. Your comments are welcome here! As long as they are complimentary towards me, of course.

I'm sorry. I like technology. But my computer, for me, is really just a glorified calculator.

Do you remember when the TI-85s were fascinating new technology? I remember laboriously typing notes to classmates, thinking the teacher might actually believe we were comparing our differential equation results. And the fact that you could beam info by laser? Brilliant! I knew it could also do a lot of impressive math-related tasks, but I wasn't very interested in that. I just wanted to write notes.

That's kind of how I feel about my home computer now. I know that it's capable of many, many calculations and running large, complicated programs that would make my puny mind's synapses quiver in fear. But I don't use it for that.

I use it as a word processor. I like to write. So I write. I am a Word formatting master. But it does still bother me that the program thinks it's smarter than me, and often changes things around to suit its preferences. Like I won't notice.

I use my computer as a DJ. Sometimes I take Keith's fancy new laptop into the kitchen while I'm cooking so I can listen to music. Under this category also falls the uses of computer as radio and CD burner. Do you remember how much time it used to take to make mix tapes? No more!

I use my computer for Internet access. This is a very important task, as it opens the doors to such a variety of knowledge repositories, from thesuperficial.com to wikipedia.org. This also encompasses its duty as communications director, in charge of e-mails and IMing.

And, of course, my computer is a calculator. Not in the calculus sense—don't be ridiculous! But in the sense of "I'm writing a 700-word article. If I have five sections, how long do they each need to be?" The kind of brightly colored, Spongebob Squarepants calculator a 2nd-grader might use.

Is this so wrong, I ask you? Sometimes I'm a little ashamed that I use only 12.6% of my computer's capacity. But it's been argued that we only use 10% of our brains, right? By that standard, surely I'm improving over nature.

But maybe what's important is knowing that much of the brain/computer's abilities lie untapped. Maybe it's enough that, for now, it saves me from having a typewriter, CD player and radio, a stack of newspapers and magazines, a TV, a telephone, and a Spongebob calculator all cluttering my desk. Although I am kind of tempted to buy the Spongebob calculator now. (Oh yes! It exists!)