These days the human race has accumulated so much knowledge that no single human being could possibly hold all this information in their head. But a monkey could probably be taught how to search for information on the Internet, our could it?
As a part time IT professional for a local canned fish firm I spend quite a bit of time helping people resolve issues on their computers. Now, the kicker is I don't have a formal degree in computer science or anything of the kind. A lot of the time when they call me in and show me their screen with some weird message displayed across it I have no idea what the issue is.
What do I do? I just sit down right there in front of them and simply google the error message, then open the links the search returns one at a time. Usually it will be some kind of an IT forum, someone else will already have had the exact same issue and they'll have shared tips on how to fix it so I just follow the instructions and presto the problem's gone. I sometimes can't help wondering why people can't do this stuff on their own: you have a problem - google it (or duckduckgo it or bing it or whatever)
And this brings me to the issue of computer literacy. What is it anyway and how do you define it? Does computer literacy simply mean being able to type stuff into a computer? Or just knowing how to use a word processor and the Internet? Or is it supposed to be something more than that? Should people be aware of at least the very basics of how computers work, that it's algorithms written by ordinary fallible humans that are running the whole show and that perhaps when something goes wrong just a little bit you don't necessarily need to panic and call the IT department, you might wanna try and resolve the issue on your own, sometimes all it takes is for you to just relaunch that process that failed or click on that OK button harder and I mean literally, I've seen that happen, you know like the first time you clicked on it, the app might have been busy doing something else in the background and your click would have gone unnoticed then.
So I would like to take this opportunity to encourage whoever is reading this to read up on at least the basics of how computers and software work (there's lots of information on here, for example: howstuffworks.com) and if you do run into problems with your computer, before dialling tech support and waiting for 30 minutes until they get back to you, you might wanna just try searching for it on line.
With the Internet at our fingertips we can all be experts on demand if we put our mind to it.
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