Getting With the PC Program
Fueled by a strong faith in technology and an uneasy fear of being left in its wake, the Southland has become one of the most computer-saturated regions in the country, according to a new Times technology poll.
Of all households in Orange and Los Angeles counties, 46% have personal computers, according to the survey. The most recent comparable national study, conducted late last year, showed that 36% of households in the United States have PCs.
Among Southern Californians without PCs, a remarkable 43% said they are likely to buy one within the next year--a statistic that underscores a growing perception of the computer as an appliance as indispensable to a home as a telephone, radio or television.
In fact, Southern Californians’ overwhelming optimism about computers and technology was one of the strongest--and, to some, most troubling--currents running throughout the poll, which was conducted for The Times by Mark Baldassare & Associates.
More than 60% of those surveyed said they believe computers and other new technological devices, such as pagers and cellular phones, are making their lives better. Only 6% said technology is making things worse.
There is also a growing sense of pressure to keep up with technology. About 75% of respondents said they feel it is important to keep pace in the computer age, although fewer than half believe they are managing to do so.
This combination of unblinking optimism and fear of being left behind has helped push the PC far beyond the pocket-protector crowd. For some, it is still a high-tech status symbol, but for many it is a coveted ticket to the future.
Joe Lopez found his family’s ticket while rummaging through a dumpster.
On his nightly rounds collecting aluminum cans along the industrial streets of Azusa, Lopez discovered a gold necklace worth $450. That’s nearly enough to cover a month’s rent for the financially strapped Lopez family. Instead, the out-of-work handyman put the money toward what he, his wife and his children had long wanted: a computer.
“The computer is the way of the future,” said Lopez, 38, who bought a used PC with a 486 processor. “And I’m hoping it will enable my children to have a better and brighter future than I had.”
Many of those polled believe that computers and other high-tech devices will give them more free time, fix schools and bring people closer together.
Few were very concerned about adverse consequences of the computer age, even though the poll also revealed such troubling trends as technology’s tendency to widen the gap between society’s haves and have-nots.
All of which makes some scholars fret that Southern Californians, like many Americans, have jumped aboard the technology train with barely a glance toward where it’s headed.
“Americans not only love technology, they lust for it,” said Neil Postman, a professor in the department of culture and communications at New York University. “But we need to become critical enough so that we can use the technology, rather than have it use us.”
Few Southern Californians seem to be losing much sleep over that prospect.
A cabinetmaker for more than 20 years, Anthony Bishop is an artisan in an era of information. While other workers spend their days staring into computer screens, Bishop knows the pleasures of shaping a piece of wood with his hands.
A bit of a throwback, Bishop loves the outdoors and still spends hours tinkering with the model train set he has kept since childhood.
But Bishop, who lives in Mission Viejo, is giving up cabinetmaking to focus on building computerized homes. He makes calls with his cellular phone during weekend hikes up Mammoth Mountain, and he is wiring his train set so he can operate it with his PC.
In fact, he has embraced the computer age so wholeheartedly that he tells his 11-year-old daughter that computer skills are “vital, right next to math and English and breathing.”
Bishop, 40, believes we are hurtling toward a glorious world in which computers will improve our lives in countless ways. Classrooms will be unnecessary as students all over the world get their education online. Hospitals will monitor patients at home via computer. And on those rare occasions when people actually have to go somewhere, computers will take care of that too.
“Imagine every car on the freeway being electric,” Bishop said. “You just punch in which mall you want and it automatically starts taking you there.”
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Bishop’s brand of optimism has a lot to do with why Americans are so enthralled by technology, and why millions of people every month rush into computer stores and spend thousands of dollars to buy machines that require tremendous patience to learn and often become obsolete in just a few years.
Such optimism is “part of a long, American tradition dating back to the telegraph,” said Susan Douglas, a professor of communications studies at the University of Michigan.
From the telegraph through the television, each new breakthrough has landed in the American marketplace like a stone in a lake, sending up a splash of expectations that over time dissipate into far-reaching but faint ripples.
“The basic pattern,” Douglas said, “is an initial flush of enormous optimism and array of utopian hopes, followed by deep disappointment.”
It’s not that technology doesn’t makes things better, she said, it’s just that it rarely lives up to the impossibly high expectations Americans tend to set.
At TV’s unveiling at the 1939 World’s Fair, David Sarnoff of RCA predicted: “It is probable that television drama of high caliber and produced by first-rate artists will materially raise the level of dramatic taste of the nation.”
In some ways, TV has done even better than that. It has given everyday people a glimpse of the moon and confronted them with the horrible images of war. But it has also sapped interest in reading, glorified violence and supplanted dinner-table conversation for millions of families.
DJ Brumby used to be a public health officer in the Air Force, but now the 36-year-old Culver City resident is struggling to make ends meet as a writer. For Brumby, who participated in The Times’ poll, the computer is an invaluable writing and research tool.
If she is writing an underwater sequence and needs to make sure it’s right, she e-mails marine biologists. “Or if I’m trying to set something in a location other than California, I can get ahold of a glider club at a field in Illinois and ask them what the conditions were like this month,” she said.
But the computer’s greatest application, Brumby said, may be as “a tool for peace in the world.”
Conflict, she said, usually stems from a failure to communicate. “With the Internet, you can talk to people anywhere in the world,” she said. “It’s going to increase communications, and once you understand people, it makes it easier to deal with each other. Black versus white. Christian versus non-Christian. The computer will increase understanding.”
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But even those who are designing the computers of tomorrow are not so sure that will happen. Donald A. Norman, head of the research laboratory at Apple Computer in Cupertino, raises another possibility.
“Everybody predicts the computer will lead to world peace and better understanding,” he said. “I say no, it will lead to better effectiveness of terrorists and counter-society groups.
“Suppose you have one or two people in your community who have weird views about the world,” he said. “Normally, they would be completely ineffective. But [computer technology] allows all these people to find each other and communicate. So what would have been one or two harmless cranks can become thousands of people across the world who reinforce their own sickness.”
And Norman considers himself a technology optimist.
There is no doubt that computers have had a profound impact on the workplace, making it quicker and easier to do everything from designing rockets to writing this article.
Even among technology skeptics polled by The Times, most acknowledge that the computer is an amazing machine.
“I wouldn’t give up my computer for the world,” said Kathleen Travers, 39, a computer expert for the city of Los Angeles’ Cultural Affairs Department. “I’ve written a couple of full-length books, and to be able to move a chapter and have it automatically renumber the pages, that is incredibly time-saving. It’s a very valuable tool.”
But in some ways, she said, the computer has made work less productive because e-mail, voice mail, pagers and other devices make communication so easy and immediate that they carry an endless stream of disruptions.
Few in the poll share these concerns. About half of those surveyed said computers and new telecommunications devices give them more free time, compared to 30% who said technology is stretching their workday. But when computer owners were asked what they use their machines for, 40% mentioned “job-related tasks.”
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Respondents brushed aside the notion that computers isolate people or eat into family time. Nearly half the respondents said they believe computers bring people and families closer together, even though the most common activities--work, word processing and personal finance--are rather solitary.
Perhaps one of the most telling poll responses came when computer users were asked how much they would miss their machines if they were taken away. About 20% said “some,” and nearly two-thirds said “a lot.”
Joe Lopez did not have his computer when the poll was conducted. In fact, he only recently found that necklace in the dumpster. But in the short time since then, the machine has already become a fixture in the Lopez household.
His 16-year-old daughter, Michelle, uses the computer for computer class homework and for writing school reports. Sometimes, Joe fires up their free trial subscription to America Online, and the whole family gathers around to watch.
Lopez is a recent arrival to the computer age, but in some ways he is already more rational than most.
While others spend small fortunes to buy computers with the latest processor and biggest hard drive, Lopez spent less than $500 on a PC that’s a little slow, but has a lot of mileage left.
He admits that he is awed by the machine, and hopes that it will “help my children go places they wouldn’t ordinarily go.” But he said he also tries to teach his daughters that, although they can learn a lot from computers, there are still things they have to learn.
Last year, he used the Marlboro coupons that he collects from dumpsters to get a dartboard.
“I watched my daughter have to count on her fingers to add up her score,” he said. “And I realized, when you’ve got calculators and computers in school to do all that thinking for you, what do you use your mind for? I tell my daughters that the computer is a tool that will benefit them, but at the same time they have to learn that people make the world go round, not machines.”
Perhaps one of the most telling poll responses came when computer users were asked how much they would miss their machines if they were taken away. About 20% said ‘some,’ and nearly two-thirds said ‘a lot.’
FIRST OF TWO PARTS
Respondents brushed aside the notion that computers isolate people or eat into family time. Nearly half the respondents said they believe computers bring people and families closer together, even though the most common activities--work, word processing and personal finance--are rather solitary.
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Up to Speed
Orange County tops Los Angeles County and the national average in terms of computer ownership. In both counties, more people were able to correctly describe the Internet than in the nation as a whole.
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Los Angeles County Orange County United States Have home computers 44% 53% 36%
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Have you ever heard of the Internet? If yes, can you describe what it is?
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Los Angeles County Orange County United States Yes, correct answer 69% 76% 34%
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Source: Times Technology Poll, 1995 Times Mirror Poll
