Word: human
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Smart little computers provide mental aerobics Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding!" The sound of a fire bell, imitated flawlessly and gleefully by a high-pitched human voice, informs the neighborhood that Moppet has conquered Machine. They are well matched: Lizie is small, going on eleven, with brightly lit hazel eyes. The vanquished mechanism is a small desktop computer called Comp IV, new this year at under $40, with flashing red lights...
Comp IV starts things off by thinking of- but not revealing - a number, and its human opponent tries to work out the secret by punching pushbuttons. Milton Bradley Co., which makes the gadget, supplies scratch pads for adults and slow-witted children, but self-respecting eleven-year-olds disdain these. The girl also does not bother with the relatively easy three-and four-digit problems. She plays at the rarefied five-digit level, which means she must hit on one out of a possible 30,240 combinations, and she keeps her notes in her head, the way the computer does...
...equal 1650, the rating of an average club player (the estimate is too generous). It has occurred to the father that it could be a great improvement, in the interest of strict fairness, if the computer had an aperture down which martinis could be poured. The valiant human attacker has such an aperture. Nevertheless he has forced a crack in the dreaded robot's pawn fortress, and he sends his queen slashing in, punching "H3 to H6" and the encode button on the keyboard. The red light-emitting diodes of the machine's digital display flicker for about...
...great many Americans are discovering this Christmas that sending a computer to the showers in bitter defeat swells human self-esteem in a wonderfully satisfying way (and losing to the wretched thing raises the dark suspicion that humanity's number may be up). Stores are full of computer games-or, in some cases, are sold out of items like Parker Bros.' Code Name: Sector (up to $50), in which the computer plays the part of a hunted submarine, and Milton Bradley's bleeping, buzzing Electronic Battleship (also up to $50)-and customers trying to buy them. Games...
There are game players in ruffled evening shirts and game players in Fonzie T shirts, and why they put in all of that time is something they do not analyze or talk about much. If they are pressed, though, some will admit that it is for the human contact, at a distance, on their own terms. And to reassure themselves each day that they have not slipped...