In the last thirty years, a computer has become an everyday device of great importance, seen everywhere, as common as refrigerators.
By itself, any modern computer can do amazing things by manipulating, words, images, and music- and now it’s also a kind of telephone, that can communicate all these things anywhere, to anyone, almost instantly.
But people have come to regard computers as previous generations regarded the telephone, as something given. It’s something that’s just there– to be used whenever needed. That’s what’s expected, that’s what it’s for. As though it had dropped from the sky for their convenience.
Rivers bring water, trees give shade, without the effort of man. But computers have to be invented, manufactured, and programmed- and maintained in their interconnections- by the intense efforts of thousands of people, who use all of their time and intelligence in the process.
Forty years ago and more, a friend of mine in New York showed me something amazing- a small TV set on which a white model of a simple molecule could be seen to rotate in three dimensions on a black screen. He called the TV a “monitor”, and the image of the molecule it displayed had been generated by a computer that he had helped to develop.
At this time computers were huge, noisy, expensive machines without eyes or ears, used only for solving equations and crunching numbers. The idea of using a computer to generate an image was revolutionary, and to accomplish this required months of work and great expense.
It’s no simpler to do this now than it was then; any major innovation needs time, money, and genius to become reality, and ordinary users rarely have any of these things. But they take the final products for granted. As though it were nothing special for them to be able to send pictures and music and foolish messages to anyone in the world whenever they want.
A man from ancient Rome, looking at this picture, would probably see a man on his knees in some religious ceremony, worshiping a idol. It would be impossible to explain to him that a computer is a common machine, as secular as a water pump, that can be used in any posture.
But to be fair, the modern man knows no more about the machine’s design or inner workings than the ancient Roman would. He just expects it to work.
