The Boeing Co.
Engineers using computers to solve complex problems in aircraft design.
The science of communication is advancing along with that of computers, and can help make the dream of a worldwide “brain” come true. Computers in distant cities are now linked by telephone lines or radio, and high-speed techniques permit the transmission of many thousands of words per second across these “data links.” An interesting sidelight is the fact that an ailing computer can be hooked by telephone line with a repair center many miles away and its ailments diagnosed by remote control. Communications satellites that are soon to be dotting the sky like tiny moons may well play a big part in computing systems of the future. Global weather prediction and worldwide coordination of trade immediately come to mind.
While we envision such far-reaching applications, let’s not lose sight of the possibilities for computer use closer to home—right in our homes, as a matter of fact. Just as early inventors of mechanical power devices did not foresee the day when electric drills and saws for hobbyist would be commonplace and the gasoline engine would do such everyday chores as cutting the grass in our yards, the makers of computers today cannot predict how far the computer will go in this direction. Perhaps we may one day buy a “Little Dandy Electro-Brain” and plug it into the wall socket for solving many of the everyday problems we now often guess wrong on.
Royal McBee Corp.
Students at Staples High School, Westport, Connecticut, attend a summer session to learn the techniques of programming and operating an electronic computer.
The Saturday Evening Post
“Herbert’s been replaced by an electronic brain—one of the simpler types.”
Some years ago a group of experts predicted that by 1967 the world champion chess player would be an electronic computer. No one has yet claimed that we would have a president of metal and wire, but some interesting signposts are being put up. Computers are now used widely to predict the result of elections. Computers count the votes, and some have suggested that computers could make it possible for us to vote at home. The government is investigating the effectiveness of a decision-making computer as a stand-by aid for the President in this complex age we are moving into. No man has the ability to weigh every factor and to make decisions affecting the world. Perhaps a computer can serve in an advisory capacity to a president or to a World Council; perhaps—
It is comforting to remember that men will always tell the computer what it is supposed to do. No computer will ever run the world any more than the cotton gin or the steam engine or television runs the world. And in an emergency, we can always pull out the wallplug, can’t we?