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The Computer Column by Luke Rogers
Computers work by magic, real magic.
Neither Sympathetic Magic, nor Contagious Magic, but the real thing: Learn
spells to control the enchanted box and
the magic mirror will show you the whole
of human knowledge and wisdom (or at
least that part held by Wikipedia).
warehouse, this is our data being assigned a place in the computer memory.
If the pallet is scheduled to stay a long
time it may be moved to a long term storage area, this is the data being saved to
a file on our computers hard disk.
Many folk legends exist to explain the The pallet is scheduled to be broken up
magic e.g. ‘It works with ones and ze- into separate boxes and distributed to
ros’, one of those profoundly true but the ultimate destination through Goods
Out, this is our data displayed on our
hopelessly unhelpful statements.
screen, printed or sent off by email.
The truth is that I don't understand the
fundamentals of the microprocessor. I This of course ignoring the reality , in
once thought I did, whilst attending a which the pallet is misnamed, misplaced,
lecture on computing I took note of this found, dropped, lost again and finally
pithy little statement; ‘at the intersection placed under a leak in the roof, hopeof the semiconductors the value is de- lessly damaging the packaging, and evependent on the average of the wave- ryone in the tea room gets posh new
form.’ I thought that sounded fantastic, mugs.
until after a little biological brain processing I realised it meant; ‘It works with Though actually, considering some computers I’ve seen, the analogy might be
ones and zeros’.
closer than we might wish...
So now I am quite happy to take refuge
in the general ignorance of computing, "The fool doth think he is wise, but the
with the feeling of having tried and hon- wise man knows himself to be a fool."
ourably failed to become a true Wizard, William Shakespeare
instead of a lowly Conjurer.
Not that this helps you, dear neighbour,
to understand how your magic box allows you to write letters or fight aliens.
So I offer up yet another flawed analogy:
The Computer as Warehouse
A pallet of coffee mugs arrives at Goods
In, this is our Input Data, by mouse, keyboard or touch screen. The pallet is
processed in the Warehouse Admin, this
is our computer processing data.
The pallet is assigned a location in the