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In a busy world, we all need to stop once in a while to think. I am writing this piece on a Pentium III laptop computer purchased from a hi-tech company in Worcestershire, using state-of-the-art software from Microsoft, sitting in a warm room with a freshly made filter coffee with frothy milk on top, during my few days off work over Christmas. This afternoon, I'll pop my latest work on this website on a CD, so I can post it to Charles, who will check it over before I upload it to the Internet in the next few days or so. Then, anybody on the planet will be able to read what we've been putting together on our website about Great Witley Church, the building we are so fortunate to use, the services and events that hard-working members of the church and the various committees have organised for the rest of us, and everything that this magnificent church stands for. If our website readers want to, they can e-mail their comments to us or ask us for more information, from wherever they are around the world, almost instantly. The technology is all there, now, and available, isn't it? Unless, perhaps, they haven't got an Internet-ready computer to hand. With a phone socket to plug their modem into. Or the knowledge to use a computer productively. Or an electricity supply to run it on. Or a warm home to use it in. Or a home at all. Or even a shelter over their heads. Or enough food to survive. Or medicine. Or basic human rights.
You don't have to get far into any news bulletin or into any newspaper to realise how fortunate we all are, and how unfortunate many of the world's population still are. Modern technology, like the famous lager beer, has yet to reach the parts that others cannot ! I am among the lucky ones able to benefit from the hi-tech, man-made wonders of computers and information technology. I think they are indispensable. I realise that I am very fortunate. But many people are not so lucky.
How many hunger-preventing meals equal one laptop computer? How many doses of antibiotics to cure basic diseases equal the cost of one Antivirus software package from my local computer store?
On Tuesday I'll be back teaching my students the wonders of IT and Computing; the methods of systems analysis, techniques they need to use their Access databases and Excel spreadsheets productively, how to program their computers using Visual Basic, how computers manage to do all the things they do so fast and so well. They will, no doubt, be telling me all about the new Pentium 4 computers, CD writers, and printers they've had for Christmas. We hardly ever, officially at least, have to discuss the ethics or morality of high technology in our world on the wider scale. Not as it affect us as occupants of the same planet. It's not on the GNVQ Intermediate ICT or AS Computing syllabus.
A recent exam question asked "State three ways that computers can help the third world countries". My students' answers were, to put it mildly, simplistic. Many seem to lack an appreciation of "how the other half lives". So much today is taken for granted - a computer and a mobile phone is seen as a "human right".
I'll try to make my IT students aware of these issues, before they go off into the big world. I'd like them to have not only a grade A or B in an exam, but have a willingness to help others benefit from what they have learned. Surely it's my duty?
(Colin, Webmaster 2nd January 2002) |
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