Computers have changed our world. That's a tired cliche, but it's true. Perhaps no other instrument of the late twentieth century has had such a fundamental and pervasive impact on our everyday lives.
Astronomy
The Hubble Space Telescope is now fixed. But astronomers were able to salvage useful images from it even before the Space Shuttle's repair mission. Image-processing software let them extract clear images from the fuzzy ones sent down by the Hubble camera.
Aviation
The Boeing 777 is the first of a new generation of airframes. It was designed entirely on computers, never going through mock-ups and prototypes. It represents the natural culmination of the trend toward CAD.
Biology
The Human Genome Project, an am
bitious multiyear effort to map the human genetic code, would be impossible without computers to store and sort the mountains of data nature has put into the human genetic sequence.
Business
If, as some recent advertisements claim, business is the engine of society, then computers must be the fuel. How else could arbitrageurs force huge swings in
stock prices
, without computers to show them the point spreads and rapidly execute their trades before the spread closes? And how else could Federal Express track billions of packages, delivering them accurately and on time?
Communities
On-line communities have evolved to meet almost any interest. Whether you want to rail against Barney the dinosaur, compare Captain Janeway to Captains Picard and Kirk, or trade meatloaf recipes, there is a virtual community for you somewhere. It can be tough sometimes to find those who share your interests, but they are almost surely
out there.
Consumers
The relationship between customers and manufacturers has changed. The concept of beta testing was foreign to most of the population 20 years ago. Would anyone have bought an automatic transmission if the manufacturer told you that it occasionally locked up and sometimes rebooted to first gear for no apparent reason? Yet we accept software that way.
Education
The coming of the information age is forcing schools to rethink curricula, which they probably should do anyway. Unfortunately, some schools insist on using computers as glorified flash cards, transferring boring rote learning from paper to software. And some of the glitzy multimedia education tools go too far the other way, making education into a game. Somewhere in between are schools using computers to let kids run experiments, analyze data, and write papers in ways that could not have been imagined 20 years ago.
Entertainment
Computers co
ntrolled the motion cameras that let George Lucas shoot all the components of a single scene separately -- the Death Star, the Tie Fighters, and the Rebel ships -- and then composite them into a single breathtaking piece of movie history.
Finance
Many of us would be bankrupt paupers without the control over our finances that programs such as Quicken have brought. Even if you don't use the programs yourself, it's likely your accountant does.
Government
Computers have created an industry that provides jobs for thousands of intelligent people who might otherwise be burdens on society -- or worse, government bureaucrats. Thank your lucky stars.
Health Care
Computers empower the physically challenged to lead productive lives; the brilliant physicist Stephen W. Hawking is an excellent example. He suffers from the degenerative muscle disease (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) popularly called Lou Gehrig's disease. Although h
e cannot use his own voice to speak or his own hands to write, he continues to contribute world-class science.
Manufacturing
Just-in-time manufacturing, which seeks to reduce inventory while increasing responsiveness to changing markets, would not be possible without computers.
Medicine
Noninvasive imaging technologies, such as CAT (computerized axial tomography) scans, have given doctors the ability to perform exploratory surgery without ever opening up the body. Soon, computer software that was originally developed to spot Soviet tanks from satellite photos will join the doctor's arsenal as a way to identify possible cancers in a mammogram.
Meteorology
The percentage of incorrect weather reports has been dropping, due in large part to better weather models. The recently announced vBNS (very high-speed Backbone Network Service) will let several supercomputers work together on much larger simulations, which should
further improve the accuracy of forecasts.
Military
As the Gulf War showed us, technical superiority can overwhelm numerical superiority. Getting there first with the most is no longer as important as having the most advanced weapons. Computer-controlled weapons help a small, well-equipped armed force keep the peace in a dangerous world.
Physics
A physicist with some new theories on star formation runs a simulation based on her new theories to test it out. Another seeking the basic quantum particles examines the remains of a proton/antiproton collision, like some voodoo priest examining the entrails of matter rather than the entrails of chickens.
Politics
During his recent unsuccessful run for the U.S. Senate, Oliver North was able to raise millions of dollars from outside his state, using mailing lists of like-minded individuals. A state-level operation never could have handled such a sophist
icated, nationwide fund-raising effort without cheap, sophisticated databases.
Publishing
The very definition of a magazine is changing. It is now de rigueur to have a Web page on the Internet's WWW (World Wide Web). Bandwidth for most users is still too narrow to allow fully formatted pages of text and graphics, and there is still too small a percentage of the population on-line. But this is changing.
In the realm of publishing on paper, now anyone with a computer and some imagination can turn out professional publications thanks to the power of desktop publishing.
Travel
Computers have improved the way we travel, from reservation systems that instantly let us
book flights anywhere
to the early-warning systems that let pilots know of potentially dangerous microburst downdrafts.
Writing
E-mail has at least temporarily stayed the death sentence of writing. Sure, the quality of some E-mail
is less than stellar, and the temptation of easy, almost anonymous, flaming has exposed the worst side of human nature. But communicating via
E-mail lets us keep in touch with a far-flung network of friends and associates.
Thanks to word processors, the task of writing has gone from chiseling in stone to sculpting from clay. It's so much easier to push and prod your words when they are glowing phosphors on a screen than when they were typed on your old IBM Selectric. We don't always take advantage of this ability, but at least it's there.
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Computers can arrange a vacation from computers.
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The $64,000,000,000 question: Is this an opportunity to take a cheap shot at military spending?
20 Contributions To Society
