Digital divides and other thoughts

November 11, 1986, in addition to being Veterans Day, also marks my first "real" (IBM compatible they called it back then) computer. It didn't have a disk drive (I bought a 10 MB hard drive in a few months and thought I was truly high-tech!)

I had purchased a VIC 20 and Commodore 64 in the early 80's, and enjoyed them, although I was not then, nor now, a computer geek in any sense of the word.

Oddly enough, on November 11, 2005, I bought my first "Apple" computer, an iMac G5 (which of course I still have).

If it wasn't for the Apple store and their extensive training/assistance program, I'm sure I wouldn't have purchased an Apple computer, or at least kept up with it to the point I purchased a "Macbook" last year. (I purchased this on the "sales tax holiday", not November 11.)

I found the Macs' to be wonderful for music, photos, and presentations. It took a while, but I also learned to operate the other programs (and find them) to where I can truly appreciate the capability of the Mac, but I still use PC's and appreciate the absolutely unbelievable advancement in computers from my first computer.

I have read about Steve Jobs, Bill Gates etc., and think about something I was told in high school that "no individual will get rich anymore"! My poor high school teacher has been proven wrong many times over! In fact, now the individual is perhaps the biggest innovator.

While I talk about the "digital divide", I am normally talking about people who don't have Internet access (or use the Internet) and those who do and how to provide information to the persons who don't have Internet access.

However, I think perhaps a bigger "digital" divide is the "geeks" who can make a computer fly to persons like me who can kind of make them work to persons who can use some basic aspects of the computer, but really use probably 1% of the capacity of the computer and make it really a glorified typewriter.

I wonder why there aren't more "Apple stores", in the generic sense that companies offer "1 on 1" training instead of classes where the talent is so varied that usually 25% of the class is bored and 25% are lost (percentages are approximate).

I was lucky in high school, I loved to type for some reason (I even have a 100 word per minute pin around her someplace!) in the era when the electric typewriter was just becoming popular, so I didn't have any problem adjusting to typing in the computer age, which helped some.

I assume that widespread computer use in school is helping some, since children literally grow up with computers, but I think there is still a widespread gap in the technologically advanced versus the technologically challenged, like me.

Sometimes I speculate, is there a market for 1 on 1 workshops? My biggest problem is I am working on a project and then I hit a snag (usually a simple snag) and I am completely blocked until I resolve the snag!

I recently noticed the Apple Store started a program even for that-a group of customers work on their projects in the Apple Store and then a "Genius" is available if a customer runs into a snag. I could get the small problem resolved and keep working on my project without becoming frustrated and quitting!

Not to push Apple over any other computers, but I feel this is a wonderful program and I hope other companies or schools start to offer it.

Does anyone see an opportunity here to prove my high school teacher wrong again?