Computers are becoming more and more important these days. They house all sorts of data from the professional to the personal. I have all of my creative work in digital form, all of my graphic design work, all of my academic work, all of my gaming (though few and far between), all of my music, family videos, and all of our family pictures. That list is anything but exhaustive. There are certainly more categories of important information housed on a hard disk. In fact, it’s probably a toss up as to what would be more damaging: house fire or hard drive failure.
A while ago I wrote about our son potentially helping a very old laptop give up the ghost. It was very very old hardware – ancient by standards of today – and through the generous work of open source software developers was able to continue to be a very useful machine. Sadly, it expired (as computers always do) at an inopportune time. Luckily the files were completely intact. Sadly, the motherboard was not. A new computer was required.
While the dead computer was a laptop and regularly sat wherever it could easily be accessed by all (including our son) we made a concerted effort to place our newer computer much higher – completely out of our son’s grasp – in order to save it from the fate of our lovable laptop. As cruel fate would have it, this new computer’s arrival coincided with our son’s increasing ability to climb. The new computer was all the incentive he needed to find his way atop our linen chest to press every button he could find (he particularly likes the CD tray) and try to use our low-tech monitor as a touchscreen. It is uncertain whether we will ever again be able to put a piece of technology high enough that it is out of his reach. Perhaps we’ll have to get him a small, aging laptop. Who knows – he might learn his lesson that way.