DAVID HARTMAN SPECIAL TUESDAY : FOCUS ON HIGH TECH FOR OLD FOGIES

David Hartman decided he wanted to do a prime-time special on computers, microchips and high tech after playing with a sports watch--and losing.

“It started about a year and a half ago,” Hartman said in an interview, “when I was on an airplane, on vacation with my wife and four kids. I had a new running watch--I’m a jogger--one of those $23 black-plastic Japanese wonders with a lot of buttons on it. You know, they beep in class and drive the teachers crazy.

“It came with an instruction booklet that was not only in computer jargon but in four languages. But when you read the jargon, it doesn’t matter whether you can understand the languages. I tried for half an hour to set this thing and finally gave up.

“A few days later my little son said, ‘Dad, let me see your watch.’ Half an hour later he came back with a wry little smile and said, ‘Dad, here’s your watch.’ It was all set with the date, time, temperature, everything it was supposed to do. ‘Dad,’ he said, ‘would you like me to tell you how to do it?’ ”

That gave him the impetus for the program, and he was further spurred along when he read a news story about a frustrated bank customer who got so mad at one of those automatic street banking facilities that he emptied a .38 into it.

“That’s the kind of frustration a lot of us old fogies feel with high-tech stuff,” Hartman said. “But we can’t get away from it. Things are not the same as they were, folks. This is the mode of the future.

“If we’re having trouble dealing with it mentally and emotionally, then maybe an hour show that’s entertaining and fun also can show people that they can deal with all this. People are basically afraid of all this junk, but maybe after a show like this they will feel that with a little effort they can handle this stuff, that machines are not monsters.”

He added: “We tried to make the point in the program that the machines are only as smart as the people who make them. Don’t let people give you the excuse that the computer is down. It’s people who fail, not machines. Hold people accountable when the machines don’t work.”

The show, entitled “David Hartman--The Future Is Now,” will air Tuesday at 10 p.m. on ABC. It shows how people work with computers, from a young Chippewa girl in Wisconsin learning traditional tribal lore from a computer to children at the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley who are learning to program robots.

On another subject--the ratings war between ABC’s “Good Morning America” and NBC’s “Today,” which has been getting hot in recent months--Hartman said:

“It draws some attention to all the morning shows, and that’s fine. They are all useful, informative programs; they are all going to survive and do well.

“There is so much criticism of television, a lot of it justifiable depending on your point of view, complaining that television is stupid, inane, sophomoric. But the morning programs really do attempt to address those criticisms, they offer information on a broad range of subjects, fairly, and I think these programs are among the best things television has to offer.

“If competition draws attention to that fact, then it is good.”