¶ Computer (1)
Index Entry
Computer:
“The computer can spend all day and all night separating the greens from the blues and never get tired. This means that it is the most highly developed specialized ‘organism’ that we know. The computer, as man’s most recent and probably most important lever with which to move the world, will take over the specialist jobs. This is important for the future man who in pre-computer days was certainly tending to become overspecialized-- and we know that any species to which this happens becomes extinct. We are certainly well on the way to becoming extinct when our greatest brains are concerned with the narrowest tasks, as we see in Whitehead’s dilemma. The world’s problems do require generalists of extraordinary ability and in large numbers because man’s Universe now is composed of many of his artifacts and he has created a complex world. While computers can ask questions, they are the questions of the specialist, and to date we don’t see how they can ask, let alone answer, one as complex as, say, how do nations disarm? It must never be forgotten that man’s brain is the product of a billion-plus years of evolution, of billions of tries which resulted in billions of failures and billions of successes. It will be many, many years before it is ever”
