PC HARDWARE

Tools define our culture. We aren't so much what we make as what we use to make it. Even barbarians can make holes with a bow and shaft; we have drill presses, hydraulic punches, and lasers. More importantly, the development of tools defines civilization. No culture is considered civilized unless it uses the latest tools. The PC is the tool that defines today's current age and culture.
Once a tool only for initiates and specialists, today the PC has become as common as, well, all those monitors sitting on office desks and overweight attache cases bulging with keyboard-screen-and-battery combinations. The influence and infiltration of the PC stretches beyond comparison with any other modern tool, even beyond the reach of common metaphors. No office machine is as common; none so well used; none so revered—and so often reviled. Unlike the now nearly forgotten typewriter that was restricted to secretaries and stenographic pools, the PC now resides resplendently on once bare drafting tables, executive desks, and kitchen counters. Unlike fax machines, calculators, and television sets, the PC doesn't do just one thing but meddles in nearly everything you do at work and at home. Unlike your telephone, pager, or microwave oven, the PC isn't something that you use and take for granted, it's something you wonder about, something you want to improve and expand, perhaps even something that you would like to understand.
Indeed, to use any tool effectively you have to understand it—what it can do, how it works, how you can use it most effectively. Making the most of your PC demands that you know more than how to rip through the packing tape on the box without lacerating your palms. You cannot just drop it on your desk, stand back, and expect knowledge to pour out as if you had tapped into a direct line to a fortune cookie factory.
Unfortunately, despite the popularity of the PC, the machine remains a mystery to too many people. For most people, the only one more baffling than programming a VCR. Everyone knows that something happens between the time your fingers press down on the keys and a letter pops up on the screen, or a page curls out of the printer, or a sound never heard before by human ears shatters the cone of your multimedia loudspeakers. Something happens, but that something seems beyond human comprehension.