“Whither doth it go?”
April 14, 2008 (Monday)
Not so many years ago, we knew nothing of computers. In the automobile assembly plant where I worked when I was a seminary student, there was a “computer” of sorts, taking up space large enough for a small house, that computed mechanically. It was more of a giant calculator. There was no monitor screen, only punched cards. It did a great job, but was slow and cumbersome as it paved the way for electronic marvels yet to be. The nearest thing to a modern computer was the scheduling apparatus that fed information to little boxes throughout the plant. Someone in the main office wrote down the specifications for each automobile with something like a ball-point pen, and the writing was transmitted by wires to the boxes. You could look through the glass and see a stylus, using ink, writing on paper whatever was being written by somebody in an air-conditioned office. Invented in the 19th Century, it was dubbed a teleautograph, but I’m pretty sure we didn’t call it that (can’t remember what we called it). The electromagnetic and mechanical process was originally used to sign documents from afar. It had more in common with the telephone and telegraph than the non-existent computer.
Ever since the arrival of the computer, it has been going through transformation after transformation. The way it is used is steadily evolving. The internet has opened up a whole new world of ideas and communication. It won’t take many years for the personal computer in your home to take the place of the television and the telephone. People will not be obligated to go in person to conduct any kind of business as it will be done online. We are already seeing some of these things today.
The whole world is being tied together as never before, mainly because of the digital age. What this means for our future remains to be seen. The possibilities for the sci-fi writers and the doomsayers are plentiful. Reminds me of a story we read in a college English class: “The Machine Stopped.” It depicted a world where everyone lived underground because the environment on the surface was so polluted no one lived there anymore. Life was sustained by a huge machine. One day the machine stopped, and no one knew what to do. Makes me ask the question I heard many times years ago in the car, “Are we there yet?” because, like you, I have heard the horrible words, “I’m sorry, our computers are down.”