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A8-AN INTERLUDE- HOW I STARTED USING THE COMPUTER

 


By pragyansharma polavarapu

After a few months of trial and error and own “research” I could create my own “Blog”. Earlier I created only “files” and “folders” and kept them locked in the D and E drives---like locking good book manuscripts in a cabinet without publishing!

The "Memory Estates" , the D drive and E drive, are like well protected rock forts in side computer for storing both unpublished manuscript files and copies of even bulky printed books( of the famed authors we liked) in electronic form . For example the great Tolstoy novel WAR AND PEACE may just occupy space of a small shirt button in the computer’s memory chip ! The DRIVES are like huge libraries of books well indexed. A “FOLDER” is like a labeled partition in a cabinet or a labeled box to keep a particular category of books.

My first science and history articles for children(the rough work) lay locked up for months in the D and E forts ! After a few weeks I started my “Blog” and published “Posts” in them (along with a few photos taken by me with my digital phone). I felt I had my own publishing house and printing press! All this experimentation was like a new job into which I joined after retirement from long government service! It was simply thrilling. In course of time, I started using the Yahoo e-mail , Yahoo Answers etc with ease.

But my knowledge of computer facilities like e-mail was abysmally low. My passwords were approved by Yahoo and MSN only after a dozen trials and after several modifications suggested by them. I treated acceptance of my password as a big technical victory achieved by me! The password was my individual key for writing in the Internet sites . The IT giants like WordPress and Google securely lock our Blog.

I was thrilled when I joined the Facebook. I could not believe my eyes after seeing in Facebook the site of NASA( the Administrative body for US space programs APOLLO program , VOYAGER programs etc). I closely followed the dazzling achievements of US space programs of 1960s and 1970s through the newspapers and radio. So it was most enjoyable to follow them in FaceBook

The NASA videos in FaceBook give a feeling like watching the space rocket launchings right at the launch site. Reading about the launching of space rockets by NASA was always a thrill for me since decades. Such launchings of space rockets, both by US and USSR( now Russia) are unsurpassed feats of adventure in the whole history of man. During college days (decades earlier in 1960s) I could not imagine ever seeing technical videos. But now I was seeing them. The times have changed since last 50 years. Every thing is now available in TV,Computer and digital phone. Even we prefer digital editions of newspapers and journals.

The Facebook was for me like a club of intellectuals, scientists and engineers. The technology and science I saw in the FB posts was like science lectures in a university. The FaceBook was for me like a virtual “officer’s club” in the air. In the FB posts and chats we could come across highly qualified scientists, engineers ,professor etc . The scientists are not only of the West but also of India .When some FaceBook user in a faraway country clicked my comments in approval I felt elated .I could carry on long chats through the textual posts with a few users all over the globe. However I have since opted out of the FaceBook.

Watching famed science /history /travel sites on the TV and computer made the mind fresh as if I visited a club after a day’s tiresome work at office. I could watch on Internet the videos of old historic universities like Oxford, Cambridge and Harvard and great Indian universities like BHU (Varanasi, India), IISc,Bengaluru( south India ) . I greatly enjoyed watching other sites relating to aeronautics, oceanography, orbiting space telescopes etc on TV, computer and the iPad .

Nowadays we are able to see the live videos of the orbiting International Space Station (ISS) in Internet sites. It is a really thrilling and unbelievable experience. The astronauts talk to us while floating near their chairs, being not able to sit in the chairs! Their books also float and fly . The astronauts swim from room to room like fishes .

The astronauts take window-side seats and broadcast to us ,viewers on earth, live videos of Planet Earth slowly rotating 250 miles below! They show , the live world of floods, cyclones , dazzling reddish sunrises and sunsets and also the shining ribbon of blue(earth’s oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere ) merging into the endless darkness of space. The views are absolutely breath taking. We are quite in the space age! We also see the pink colored curtains of “Aurora Borealis” of the northern polar regions.







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