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These days, all our "servants" speak binary
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Location: Blogs Sly Comments |
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| Posted by: Emory Schley |
4/16/2007 7:36 AM |
The other day, several of us were sitting around discussing the enormous impact computers have made on our lives. The number of industries that have been transformed by computers is truly astounding. I suspect eventually computers will have exercised an even greater impact on our lives than the wheel ever did.
When is the last time you saw a typewriter? A manual watch or an escapement-type clock? A carburetor? A tape recorder? A movie camera (not a video camera, but one that uses film), even still cameras that use film are beginning to become obsolescent, a darkroom, a photo enlarger, a phonograph, a slide rule, an adding machine, a manual cash register, and you could add hundreds, if not thousands of more items to that list, if you took the time to compile it. All these items and thousands more, have been transformed into far superior versions once they’re “taught” to understand the ubiquitous language of ones and zeros. All the replacements for those items listed “speak” binary now, and we’re all the richer for it.
I can remember when Bulova boasted that its Accutron watches could maintain accuracy to within one minute per month. That was back in the 1960s. They used electronic tuning forks instead of balance wheels and cost a pretty good sum of money. Now a poor quality digital watch at bargain basement pricing points can easily duplicate that degree of accuracy, and in most cases
, probably even exceed it.
Our automobiles of today couldn’t even get you across the street without computers. Fuel injection was a long-sought goal for the automotive industry, but a practical, reliable, easily-maintained fuel injection system had to wait until the advent of cheap automotive computers to become a reality. Electronic ignitions and fuel injection transformed engines into super efficient purveyors of power, but that wouldn’t be possible without computers that constantly monitor and make adjustments to the engine and its air and fuel flow.
Computers run our power plants, operate textile mills, help design new products, run our space program, keep track of our finances, entertain and inform us on the Internet, assist in surgical procedures, map the inside of our bodies, answer our telephones, fly our airplanes, guide our ships, play music, edit movies, help fight our wars, process our words, create special effects in our movies, track shipments all over the globe, create our television pictures, maintain inventories, and even play games with us. There seems to be no limit to what computers can do. Computers have transformed our lives as completely as electricity once did for our ancestors, but at a far faster pace. You would be hard-pressed to name even one field in today’s technological cornucopia that hasn’t been improved, and dramatically so, by computers.
As computers grow ever more powerful with each succeeding year, the day may someday dawn when our lives are totally dominated by computers, instead of the “almost dominated” state we live in today.
Once the undeveloped parts of the world start catching up to the rest of us, digitally, wonders we never thought of, might very well become commonplace to spark up our dreary lives.
It’s something to look forward to! |
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