The Use Of Computers
          

                About a month before the oral history was due, I interviewed a very intelligent man named Fred Dawson, who lives in a home located in Glendale. At the age of seventy- three, Fred is still a very athletic and hard working man. I met Fred randomly at the library, and asked if I could interview him for a project. He immediately said yes. That was because he used to be a teacher and said that he knows how hard it is to find someone that will let you interview them. I asked him to tell me what the biggest change was from back when he was a kid. He thought about it for awhile and replied, " I saw the change in computers over the years." He was first introduced to computers at work, and ended up loving them. Mostly because it made his work much easier. Throughout, all of his childhood life, he never saw or used computers. Computers were a very big help to him when he got older.
          

            Computers didn't change me but I saw the change in computers over the years. When I was in lower level education, computers weren't there. We used typewriters, letters, and telephones, these where the means of communication. Actually, even through college I never saw computers. It was only when I started working in different areas after college, when I began to use the computer.
At my last job, I worked for many years without a computer. We went into the office everyday, and had the secretaries type up letters. We sent messages by intercom communication, and we used the Xerox machine to make copies. Then one day, they announced that all of use were being given lab top computers. That was around, I would say 1995 through 1998. From that time on, the computer became one of our main tools. They told us we could stay at home, and use our computers instead of coming into the office. That was the first time I saw a personal computer. Not all of us had ours yet, but some people already had them. That would be I would guess twenty years ago perhaps.
               

            I didn't get a computer right away when they first came out. I began learning of them and how they were beneficial. The computers looked a little complicated at first, and it wasn't until some of the programs by Microsoft that they became a lot easier to use. My first computer was free from my company, so I didn't buy one until a few years after I retired. And we paid around a thousand dollars I think for it.
Right now, I'm not using computers as much because I am retired. In the past couple of weeks I used it to type up my friend's immigration papers. And, that was very helpful, because it made it easy to type it up in a very clear and concise way. I only use it to communicate with my company that's handling my stock. You can use the internet on the computers to trade stock without actually going to the stock brokers office or calling there. My family uses it to communicate with their friends both here and with their relatives in the Philippians. My family didn't have the same advantage of the computer as I did, because they were older than I was.
          

            In my neighborhood, I really don't see people using computers, but I have heard them saying that occasionally they looked up something in the computer. My family of course uses it, believe it or not my sister living several blocks from me has never had a computer and she doesn't even know how to use one. So, you still have people like that still around, that grew up without computers and either cant afford one or don't have the enough need for one. They just learned how to lived without one. They use the telephone, they use letters, they make personal visits, they just have built a life around not having a computer because that's how they've lived and it's very hard for them to change now.

            At first, I didn't like computers, and nobody liked them, because we didn't know how to use them. Once we got used to them we found that they were a great advantage. I used to write my letters out in long hand usually and turn them into the secretaries to type up .Waiting for the secretaries to return the letters, sometimes thinking a week, I would just go home and type up all my letters within a few hours. The corrections were easier, we used to have to use white out, carving copies, using carving paper. Then of course there was email, we could send messages instead of using intercom and we'd use instant messages.
           

            Right now in my house there are two computers, one is a Dell that's a full screen, and the other one is a lab top. I really don't use the computer as much as my family does. My wives' two daughters use it for their school work, they type up their assignments, they do research for their projects at school, or they use it to process photos.
             

            Computers should be used in the way that helps that particular person the most. If a person is an author and wants to use it to write books, he can use it to research that book. He can use it to type the manuscript for that book. Or, if the person is an accountant working with figures, he can use the spreadsheets to keep track of all of his records and do computations.
            

              Computers have opened up communication between people within the country, from people between countries, from organizations in our country in other countries. In other words, its made the world smaller because we can communicate better, easier, and faster. There is no doubt the computers have changed the world, and they are continuing to change the world because there is new additions that are coming out of line all the time.
            

            Computers to me have been something that made my work easier, especially typing letters. Also, improved my ability to carry out my job performance at work. So its simply a tool that has improved my life. I think in general that's what computers mean to me. It has many more possibilities as to what it could do for me in the future.

Interviewed by: Annett Nazaryan