I am one of those computer guys.
When I worked as an intern at GE Astrospace in 1990, our team of about 20 people shared six or seven computers situated in the common area of the office. We had two black and white Mac’s (SE-30s), a color Mac (Macintosh II), and three or four VT100 terminals (connected to the VAX machine somewhere else in the building).
One of my unofficial roles as the intern was to be the “computer guy.” Most of that computer guy work was secretarial. The real engineers would give me their handwritten tables and ask me to create a pretty graph on the Mac. Or they would give me the modified characteristics of a component box on the spacecraft and ask me to update the model on the VAX so they could perform new radiation analyses.
I didn’t mind because a) I got to learn about real engineering work, and b) I liked learning how to use the computers. In those first few years, I taught my team members how to use now-ubiquitous technologies such as networking, email, and the web.
My computer guy-ness spilled over into my entire life. Even though I was an electrical engineer working on spacecraft problems, I became known as the computer guy in all aspects of my life.
My friends and family would describe what I did for work as, “Oh, he’s one of those computer guys.”
In the 90s, having the skill of operating a computer was a novel quality. A quality worth mentioning about a person. Just like being a “driver” was something worth noting about a person around the turn of the 20th century.
But today? Everybody’s a driver and a computer guy.
You’ll probably be better off embracing useful technologies rather than sounding the alarms.
