If you weren’t in an area that rejects modern technology, you know that computers are now a part of our daily lives. You have your simple computers, like the iPods, cell phones, and CD players, to the complex, like iMacs, Palm Pilots, and PC’s, even your car. Some computers are for entertainment, others for your safety.

You may walk around campus seeing other people with laptops, music players, and other portable devices. Your friend may even brag about his car, about how it goes fast. How do you think that he knows this? A computer told him.

Nowadays, some classes require that you have either access to a computer or own one at home for homework. Some teachers may even refuse handwritten work. This may not be the case here at MHCC, but other teachers at other schools may have that attitude.

Computers can track where we are, where things are, and log everything. One of the more well known tracking devices is known as the “black box” or recorder that is in airplanes and some cars. These can tell speed, what happened, even tell how long the last trip was.

Computers can help save your life, literally. Computers can help diagnose problems in your body, or take vitals, like heart rate, blood pressure, and blood oxygen levels. They can also help doctors in seeing what is going on by taking x-rays, taking and interpreting mammograms, and even store your medical information.

They can also diagnose problems with your car, check your car’s emissions, and, in some cases, fix the problem. There are even specialized ones that interpret the speed you’re going, the status of your vehicle, and keep the vehicle moving at the speed you want (it’s called cruise control).

Computers can edit and provide entertainment. There are image editing tools like Photoshop and GIMP. Even movie editing tools like Apple’s iMovie and Microsoft’s Movie Maker.

What may annoy even the best student is that other people in the computer business are making up words and terms. Terms like SATA and Malware. I didn’t even have a clue what SATA meant before writing this article. All I knew is that it was a hard drive interface, like IDE, but with a different cable interface.

Once you know some of the jargon, how it affects your life, and how it is integrated, you learn how to cope with it. You may even be curious about it enough to build your own computer.

Computers are a part of our life whether you like it or not. Your car, cellphone, anything technological has computer parts in it.