If you ask the average person about their computer and what it does they will probably respond with something like it lets me talk to my friends or go on the internet. All that they know is they push the power button and the screen displays what they want to see. They don’t know how it happens or why. They just know that every time they push that button it does it. Some people may even go as far to say that it’s “magic”. This couldn’t be farther from the truth.

A computer is a rather simple device. A computers primary job is to accept input from the user and output the results. Computers are really quite stupid in comparison to humans. As a human we have this thing called free will. We have the ability to make our own decisions, good or bad. Just because someone tells us to do something we can respond one of two ways. We can either honor the request and carry it out or just outright refuse it. Computers do not have this ability. They do whatever the user tells them to do. When you type in a website into your web browser someone somewhere has programmed that web browser to accept certain parameters and behave accordingly.

The biggest thing that annoys myself about the average computer user is that they blame everything that goes wrong on the computer itself. It never occurs to them that the problem is usually caused by poorly written software (Ex: Windows :P ) or user error (usually is the problem). So next time you think that your computer is the one causing all the issues just remember that it’s usually a PEBKAC issue.