Saturday, November 22, 2014

Using computers

The late Dominican John O'Gorman, who died on November 3, feast of St Martin de Porres, 12 years ago, often commented that his fellow Dominicans had more computer power then the US space agency. He was of the opinion people were buying highly sophisticated computers to write letters.

John taught computer science at the University of Limerick.

Since he made his comment no doubt the purchase of computer hard and software has at least quadrupled.

Today at the touch of a button information can be disseminated with complete ease to almost any corner of the earth.

And yet with all this computer technology so many people are left in the dark and hear nothing about what is going on in the organisation.

John was a highly intelligent man, who usually got things right. Alas, he was wrong on this occasion. It seems the computers are not even being used to write letters.

1 comment:

Fergus said...

Were that post on facebook I would like it.

There seems to be a tendency to equate technology with communication and expect the former and its "experts" to do the latter. When printing came in in Western Europe, nobody expected the paper makers, printers and binders to write the books; nobody expected the amplification experts installing sound systems in churches to deliver sermons.

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