Abstract
As computers continue to advance on so many fronts, it will be ever more necessary to ensure their humane use and human control. To this end, it is a salutary exercise to remind ourselves that today’s computers, and computers in the future, are machines. Computers can still not demonstrate any facility that as not been programmed into them, even though they may be able to perform their programmed functions considerably better than their human programmers, and computers will continue to be the creations of men. True engineers have no respect for man-made objects, because anything made by one human hand can e made better by another, and engineers will continue to demonstrate this by making better and better computers. The true problem of machines like computers continues to be that they are means to an end, while society determines those ends, either deliberately or by default. If you do not like what computers are being sed to do today, or you fear what computers may be used to do in the future, then the remedy is in your own hands. Equally, if you do not use computers to help control human progress in what will be an increasingly competitive and unfriendly world at the end of this century, then again the fault is yours, and mine. Mastering computers, and other machines, is ultimately an act of political and moral will, of which only people are capable.
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© 1988 Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Wright, G. (1988). Postscript. In: Mastering Computers. Macmillan Master Series. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-09944-3_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-09944-3_12
Publisher Name: Palgrave, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-45640-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-09944-3
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