Upgrade your life from your PC

Posted on 30 Jul 2010 at 13:44

Learn a language, magic tricks or how to become a wine buff with our guide to acquiring life skills

The humble PC can do amazing things: it can play movies, touch up photographs, create 3D worlds and solve sums in a nanosecond (even really difficult ones with fractions). In fact, you’d be forgiven for suspecting your computer is more capable than you.

But you have something your PC lacks: the potential to learn, practise and develop skills a computer could never hope to master. Although, ironically, your computer might be just the tool to help you get there.

We’re not talking about programming courses or technical support databases. Those are useful resources, to be sure, but we have our sights set higher: on real-world life skills. With an internet connection and the odd bit of software, your computer can set you on the road to being a master of languages, an accomplished musician or a culinary connoisseur.

Of course, there are limits to what you can learn sitting in front of a PC. Outside of computing, most worthwhile skills have a physical aspect that can be mastered only with real practice. But there’s almost always an element of theory, of basic principles that must be understood before you can get started, and tips to help you make progress once you’re on your way. With text-based resources, videos and exercises, computer software can certainly be a springboard.

Over the coming pages, we’ll survey the huge range of skills you can acquire from the comfort of your desk, and guide you through the websites and commercial packages that can help. These are just to get you started; once you get stuck in, you’ll be moving on to more detailed and more advanced resources.Perhaps you’ll even find a tutor or enrol in evening classes.

But in any journey the most important step is the first, and on the following pages you’ll find plenty, all leading in diverse, challenging and rewarding directions – and all starting from your computer screen.