To be truly free in the 21st century, we have to ignore the flashy graphics and really get inside our computers

Dylan Evans
Thursday November 6, 2003
The Guardian

In the west, at least, illiteracy is practically a thing of the past. That's just as well, since it is difficult to survive, and virtually impossible to prosper, in today's world without the ability to read and write. There is another kind of illiteracy, however, as widespread as the old kind used to be: computer illiteracy. Even in the most advanced countries in the world, the vast majority of people are still unable to read or write any kind of computer language.

Sure, most of us can use computers these days. We know how to send email, surf the web or write a letter in Word. But would you know what to do if all those pretty little icons in your browser disappeared and, instead of Windows, you were left staring at lines of letters and numbers of HTML, the language in which web pages are written? If, like Neo in The Matrix, you could see the code behind the graphics?

If your answer is "no", then you are in the majority - one of the many millions of peasants in the technological middle ages. Like most humans in The Matrix, who believe they are living a normal life when in fact their bodies lie inert in a vast complex of pods, you are asleep, a prisoner of your ignorance. And the only way to escape is by getting to grips with the machines, by learning their language. If you don't get inside them, they will get inside you. Adapt or die.

Things can only get worse. As our society becomes ever more dependent on information technology, the gulf between those who understand computers and those who don't will get wider and wider. In 50 years, perhaps much less, the ability to read and write code will be as essential for professionals of every stripe as the ability to read and write a human language is today. If your children's children can't speak the language of the machines, they will have to get a manual job - if there are any left.

This is yet another reason why Windows is such a dangerous commodity. It lulls us into the pernicious illusion that we can deal with computers without adapting to their logic. By presenting us with colourful screens and buttons for us to click on, Microsoft encourages us to believe that we can force computers to adapt entirely to our preferences for visual images, without having to adapt ourselves to their preference for text.

But not only does this prevent people from getting inside the machine and keep them in a state of blissful ignorance, it also proves to be a deceit, for in the end the user still has to adapt to the machine anyway.

We wait, a captive audience, while the browser painstakingly loads the next image-stuffed web page, or we click through menu after menu until we eventually realise that we are not in control after all. The Windows control us.

Paradoxically, it is only by learning the language of the machines, by adapting to their logic, that we can free ourselves from their dominion. It is only by seeming to go backwards, to the way we interacted with computers before Windows came along, that we can go forwards. Remember DOS or the ZX-80, or the old BBC computer? Not much in the way of fancy graphics. Just lots of text, and strange words like DIR and CD.

Isn't this too much of a burden for the average computer user? Shouldn't we try to force computers to adapt to us as much as possible by giving them user-friendly interfaces and hiding their internal workings? Shouldn't we be able to get on with our jobs without worrying about what is going inside the black box? If that is your attitude, fine. If you want to remain inside the dream world of The Matrix, that's your choice.

It's not just laziness, of course, that prevents people from getting to grips with computers. Cowardice also plays its part. But whatever the motive may be, the result is always the same. Natural selection doesn't care whether a man in a burning building is too lazy to get out or too scared. The secretary who can't be bothered to learn more about the office computer than how to read email and the grandad who feels intimidated by the new technology are equally doomed.

Fortunately, lack of information is not an obstacle to learning about computers. In the west, most people can easily get their hands on books and their eyes on web pages that can take them all the way from complete ignorance to power-user status. But this is not enough on its own; it is also necessary to spend hundreds - no, thousands - of hours at the keyboard. This might sound like hell. But if you want to be truly free, you have no choice but to understand the machines you work with.

· The film Matrix Revolutions was in part inspired by Introducing Evolutionary Psychology, by Dylan Evans and Oscar Zarate

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