Sunday, March 13, 2011
ComputerPocolypse
A recent rash of serious computer troubles has me thinking. How much I depend on the computer to support my hobbies. Specifically roll playing and war gaming. On my computer there is over 7 GB of stuff in over 100 folders containing over 15 00 files. Barely a fraction of that has been converted to hard copy. I admit I'm a collector of stuff. Most of which I will never use. I had been filling up my available physical space rapidly in the years before owning a computer. Fortunately electronic files will never clutter your place or choke off your living space. And I have certainly cut down on the physical collecting in the 12 years I have had personal computers. So every year more and of my gaming materials require a computer to use. But what if suddenly all that stuff was gone? What if you couldn't even use a computer any more? a rouge wave of cosmic rays or something wipes out ever computer and electronic device on the planet. Could you go back to pen and paper, counter and map? Just dice, pencil and paper plus your imagination?
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I think I could. Maybe it's just because my computer is a bit out of date but I use it to supplement the books, not supplant the books. Still, I have noticed how some other folks read from a notebook computer more often than a proper notebook. If I had one of those sleek little machines or (Lords of Kobol help me) a tablet computer then perhaps I would load it up with pdfs and carry that around instead of a gym bag full of paper.
ReplyDeleteOr maybe not. I find books easier to use. The "controls" are quite intuitive and much more responsive than electronic media. As Zak says, among many other things, "you press your fingers against the back cover and push your thumb in, compressing the pages, and they fan past you, springing out from under your raking thumb, and the headings are large, and -bing- there it is."
I have yet to see a computer you can riffle through.
I have never put to much faith in a computer for storage of anything of importance (just call me old fashioned, I don't mind ) I am now in my 4th computer and they all have one thing in common incompatability with its previous version, sure I had lots of files but they were all locked into a safe that I couldn't open, because the machine had failed and was not worth fixing.
ReplyDeleteI learned along time ago to stick to hard copies of anything worth while, its nice to know that the only upgrade required is new reading glasses.
I'm not saying that I don't use a computer to supplement my hobbies, its just that I don't depend on it and if I were to lose it my gaming wouldn't change