Hentrietta Hay's Column

Some people play golf. Some people play bridge. Some people travel. I like to play with computers.

In the midst of the hottest summer on record, creative ideas are few and far between. So I have spent a lot of it in my nice cool play room playing with my favorite toy. Some of my friends think that I have a couple of screws loose because I think computers are fun. I am, of course, talking about the personal ones that are rapidly becoming standard equipment in American homes. What I truly understand about how computers and languages work you could engrave on the head of a pin, but I find myself agreeing with Marshall McLuhan that, "The computer is by all odds the most extraordinary of the technological clothing ever devised by man, since it is an extension of our central nervous system. Beside it the wheel is a mere hula-hoop."

I am what is politely called a gadget nut and have acquired a lot of them in my day, gadgets, that is, not nuts. But nothing can equal the special relationship I have with computers. Michael Green, in his book Zen and the art of the Macintosh, defines this relationship. "A computer can interact so delicately and precisely with the intellect that it really does become an integral part of the cognitive process -- something that no mere mechanical contrivance could ever do before".

For me it is a wonderful instrument to exercise the two sides of my aging brain. The left side of the brain is the Logical You. It learns about things by analyzing them, by taking them apart, by following sequential patterns, by striving to understand them. The right side of the brain is the home of the Creative You. It learns by looking at larger patterns, by letting the mind run free, by taking risks, by imagining, by creating. Although in most people one or the other side is dominant, to achieve real balance we must use them both.

And here comes this wonderful machine, the computer, in which these two modes are interchangeable. It is so fully capable of performing almost any task I give it that it frees my mind to roam at will. But its complexities are so great that there is a pure intellectual challenge in trying to figure out how it works and how to make it do more. I can go from one to the other at ease, or let them flow together.

I can be creative, or solve a software problem for the sheer mental exercise. I can draw silly pictures just for the fun of it, or pretend I am Mr. Spock and strive to understand. Or, it I have lots of time, I can fly my little Cessna around the Golden Gate and down the coast and if, or when, I crash, nothing gets hurt except my pride.

The computer gives me not just an ordinary hobby, but excitement and Stimulation and greatly expanded horizons. It exercises both sides of my brain even as walking presumably exercises my heart. It takes up very little room. It does not require physical strength or dexterity or good hearing. It certainly does not require youth. I am finding more and more people of my generation who are realizing its potential for giving them a much brighter old age.

Some imaginative person has called computers skis for the mind. That's a wonderful image. Maybe I do have a couple of screws loose, but at least there is one rattling around in each half of my brain and the noise does keep it awake.