It is remarkable that I can sit here in Africa looking at images on my computer monitor and with just a few key strokes, a package of goods will arrive days later on a doorstep in America. No catalogs, no telephone calls, no letters. Nothing but mysterious electrical impulses cause it all to happen. What was unimaginable to the common man less than half generation ago has not just come to pass – it’s become passé. But how can something that so profoundly affects our lives be so technically complex as to be incomprehensible to ordinary people?
Take Skype for example. How can 20,000,000 people talk at the same time without their conversations getting just a little mixed together somewhere between here and there? And how do my voice and picture get around the world instantly, anyway? I don’t know, but I have seen the proof it works. Computers and the internet are amazing. Sure, sometimes things break down and I get frustrated. And at times, because I can’t fix the problems, I even get a little angry. Yet somewhere and somehow there seems to be a fix. With a bit of well-informed help the problem can be resolved and the computer can be working properly again. Once again, I am soon amazed at what the internet can do and how it affects my life. We have much faith concerning our computers. I cannot explain how my computer communicates from Africa to Amazon and then to booksRus; or how booksRus finds PayPal; or how PayPal gets approval from my credit card company; or how Amazon tells UPS to go to booksRus to get my book to deliver it to Main Street USA. And that just touches the surface of the astonishing series of electrical impulses and human responses that gets the book to my American doorstep. It all depends on countless unseen computers working silently (or so it seems to us) in unknowable places. I can’t explain it, but I do have much faith that it will happen, that my credit won’t be stolen, my life won’t be ruined, and that one day I will actually get to enjoy the book I have been promised to receive.
