By CJ

This is a subject recently raised in a technical forum and which got me thinking.

I spent all my own career working in technology, initially in the telephone network and then in the computer industry, even before the PC as we know it was invented by IBM in 1981.

You will gather I am of a certain age, yet I regularly use my PC at home to email friends and contacts across the world, pay bills, check bank balance and move money around savings accounts. With yearly increases in power and insurance companies annual charges, which almost always penalise those who stay with the same company year after year, it is essential to get a variety of alternate quotes.

I have to say that on some days the technology has a habit of being ‘annoying’ and on others downright exasperating, but overall it seems to work 95% of the time. Yet some people are not used to using this technology and find the use of computers totally bewildering.

The savings to be made in terms of time and effort and not least money are immense. They are very affordable and available almost everywhere, but come with no warning about getting training on using them in an increasingly dangerous online society.

Fraud and personal safety issues are increasingly making the headlines.

The use of social networking sites to communicate, especially amongst the young and emotionally vulnerable, has recently thrown up all sorts of problems for the unwary.

I must confess to using my very modern but very basic mobile phone to only make calls and actually speak to people. Regardless of all its capabilities I can’t work out how to use it, but I do not tweet or share all my personal details with people online around the world, for what seems to me very obvious reasons.

So should computers come with a public health warning? 

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