The Things One Thinks Of

[kerravonsen]

A song from "My Fair Lady" came up on the randomplay. Professor Higgins, male chauvinist, is one of those fictional characters that I would like to give a good talking to about his sexism. But the problem with time travel, is that one doesn't have the same context; I started pondering how one could explain "Computer Programmer" to someone from before computers were invented... or whether it wasn't worth trying.

First attempt:

Computers are machines that weave numbers. You might think that's pretty useless, but you can use numbers to represent anything. Words. Pictures. Sounds. The machine can translate back and forth between the numbers and what they represent. Which means that you can manipulate them: store them, retrieve them, change them, transmit them over telegraph wires.

... and at this point my brain fails me.

Comments

[fred_mouse]

Especially complicated by 'computer' being a lowly-paid, menial job often done by women. I'm not sure of the full context, but they were the people who did the calculations for tables books.

[infiniteviking]

On the other hand, it was a woman who wrote the first computer algorithm, before the first computer existed. Call it a complex coded language for representing pictures, words, and processes, and you've probably got it. It's the "what do we do with them now that we know that" part that's difficult to explain.

[kitkat71483.livejournal.com]

I've thought about that also. Trying to explain the scope of the Internet, the 'cloud' that all information is kept in on the net, how people can communicate across so great of a distance. It would sound like magic in some respects.....LOL

[jhall1.livejournal.com]

I like your metaphor of weaving. It seems particularly appropriate since the Jacquard loom was arguably the first time that a machine was programmed.

Coincidentally, just yesterday evening I was watching the second part of a very good TV documentary called "Order and Disorder", which dealt with this very topic: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01nj44h

[sallymn.livejournal.com]

I think I'd start by asking your someone how he would explain something from his friend to someone a couple of hundred years earlier... thta idea helps open up ideas.

[jaxomsride.livejournal.com]

One would have to consider if you are explaining it to someone who travelled forwards or if you'd travelled back. Spoilers! After all the very concept may be enough to trigger ideas that could change the whole course of human history.

Seriously, your first attempt isn't bad but I think you might have to explain a bit better how numbers can represent things. It is sometimes boggling to consider all the complicated things we can do with a machine that only understands the difference between a 1 and a 0.