Word: computerize
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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A fear of intellectual inadequacy, of powerlessness before the tireless electronic wizards, has given rise to dozens of science-fiction fantasies of computer takeovers. In The Tale of the Big Computer, by Swedish Physicist Hannes Alfven, written under the pen name Olof Johannesson, the human beings of today become the...
Other scientists too are apprehensive. D. Raj Reddy, a computer scientist at Pittsburgh's Carnegie-Mellon University, fears that universally available microcomputers could turn into formidable weapons. Among other things, says Reddy, sophisticated computers in the wrong hands could begin subverting a society by tampering with people's relationships with...
Dartmouth College President John G. Kemeny, an eminent mathematician, envisions great benefits from the computer, but in his worst-case imaginings he sees a government that would possess one immense, interconnecting computer system: Big Brother. The alternative is obviously to isolate government computers from one another, to decentralize them, to...
Some of the most informed apprehensions about computers are expressed by Professor Joseph Weizenbaum of M.I.T.'s Laboratory for Computer Science. Human dependence on computers, Weizenbaum argues, has already become irreversible, and in that dependence resides a frightening vulnerability. It is not just that the systems might break down; the...
It is 7:30 a.m. As the alarm clock burrs, the bedroom curtains swing silently apart, the Venetian blinds snap up and the thermo stat boosts the heat to a cozy 70ş. The percolator in the kitchen starts burbling; the back door opens to let out the dog. The TV...