Onion is awesome
In a radio podcast, the newspaper The Onion perfectly described many patrons feelings about their ability to destroy computers because they don’t know what they’re doing. I teach a lot of beginning computer classes, and this seems to be a common fear – perhaps spurred on by early media perceptions of computers, where by pressing a single button, a user inadvertently wipes out all the information on their computer, or something like that.
Elderly Woman Destroys Internet
It’s a funny little podcast, but it’s a good reminder that many people just starting out with computers and the Internet have very real fears of destroying something, erasing everything, ‘breaking’ the computer, etc. I do what I can to alleviate this fear, talking about the way computers have changed over the years to have back-ups and those pop-ups that warn you before you close an unsaved document, etc.
