On the road…again!

Afghanistan to Zambia

Chronicles of a Footloose Forester

By Dick Pellek

Computer Learner Becomes a History Scholar

This chronicle makes use of the “On the road….again!” letterhead above, not because it is a remembered tale about some brief sojourn of the Footloose Forester to an obscure destination in Africa. No, it is the tale of a sojourn into his personal learning experiences vis à vis the use of computer software and how all of us can use computers for better, or for worse. You might say that it is a tale of an untrained and inexperienced beginner just getting his learner’s permit.

Years ago, before the age of auto computer diagnostics and the dozens of warning sensors found in modern automobiles, teen-aged boys who monkeyed around with cars became adept at making many repairs, themselves. Some decided to become mechanics; and we all respected their ability to learn, to adapt, and to fix things that needed fixing.

These days, the computer rookie who is curious enough about learning about some of the possibilities of communications via the Internet, soon learns that s/he can also pass for being well informed, factually correct and very much up to date with authoritative writings that may have nothing to do with that person’s personal opinion, research findings, or individual study. That is to say, you don’t have to know what you are talking about, based on your own scholarly or academic credentials; all you have to do is read it somewhere else and copy the information onto your computer’s clipboard, then paste that information into your outgoing message to someone else.

Microsoft Word, for example, facilitates the process of excising whole passages of someone else’s editorial comment about an issue, as printed in a newspaper or magazine;  then depositing the selected text into a Word document, by the cut-and-paste process more familiar to an earlier generation of students who used actual scissors and glue. The almost instantaneous copy-and-paste routine of computer software does not even require that the computer user have the word processing function in an active mode. That means that the curious reader of an editorial or interesting passage in a magazine can choose to highlight the target text first; press the copy option with a mouse; and then open up a blank page in a fresh Word document; and then, quite unobtrusively but deliberately, paste the text into the blank document.

The technique even assigns a title to the copied text. Of course, it is possible to move the excised text around within the new document, or copy it to another document; and  even change fonts for appearances sake. So, it would be very easy to disguise the original copied text to make it seem like the Computer Learner is the source of the discourse.

This observer is delighted that Microsoft Word makes it so easy to capture printed text and even photos onto a clipboard, but there is a downside to the technology. The technology itself makes it extremely easy to deceive others, especially when the completed document makes no reference to the ideas of others, but attempts to pass off the entire document as one’s own. Any would-be plagiarizer must be rejoicing at the prospects.

Reputable scientists have long ago learned that properly citing references is expected—to establish one’s personal credibility; but also to distinguish the writer’s point of view from that of the referenced citation, in case there is a disagreement that needs to be elaborated.

The downside of computer capability has the more worrisome aspect of sharing information that is suspect. In these times of political polarization, it is shocking how widespread and frequent are the falsehoods, deceptions and smear campaigns against opponents being perpetrated by entire organizations, for their own purposes and to the detriment of the truth. In American politics, before the Bush Bashers there were the Clinton Haters; and now there are the Obama Haters. Knowing the real truth about an issue is something we should all strive for, but these days it is much more difficult to steer a true course when malevolent winds blow from both directions, and at the same time.

This self-taught Computer Learner keeps an archive of interesting articles, citations, graphs, and photos in his computer; as a way to keep notes, and as a way to refresh his memory about issues that interest him. He should not, however; take any credit for the words or the opinions of columnist Pat Buchanan, for example, whose recent editorial comments have been copied below (but kept with the original fonts during transcription). Nor should anyone think that this novice Computer Learner has the vast erudition and political acumen of Pat Buchanan, just because Buchanan’s words may have been high-jacked and possibly disguised by changing the original fonts.

Finally, nobody should conclude that the Computer Learner shares Buchanan’s viewpoint. It is not the intention of the Footloose Forester to harangue anyone on political matters, at this moment or at any time in the future. The excerpt originally chosen as an example was selected merely to make the point.  Unfortunately, it failed to load during the conversion from multiple font faces, so will not be shown below; as intended to make that point. Suffice it to say that it resides in archives and is just one of many examples of the copy-and-paste process.

Excerpt: Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 4 March 2011, editorial by Pat Buchanan   [NOT SHOWN]