C OMPUTER : M AN S B EST F RIEND ?

FINNEGAN LOWELL BUCK

Otherworld News, Slime Street 376, Atlantis,

4th of March 2013 Volume 1, Issue 1

We are now in the 21st century and people are becoming more and more reliant on every kind of technology. Laptops, tablets, calculators, entertainment devices and phones; in many ways the computer has become mans best friend. What will come next? What will become of humanity if we continue to develop and rely on computers so much? Many of our hopes and dreams for the future are based on computers, but isnt it dangerous putting our hopes into a thing that has no moral, love or even thought?

have smarter computers than in the 1943, computers also have become some of the most manufactured objects in the world. If you think about it, computers werent meant to be used all the time. "There is no reason anyone in the right state of mind will want a computer in their home."- Ken Olson, President of Digital

Equipment Corp, 1977. That was 36 years ago, but now almost everyone here has a laptop or some other device at home. There has been such an explosion of new programs that computers these days can do almost anything and people trust them with jobs such as flight control, medical records [and] electricity grids, as Christopher Buck says. And we trust them a lot to, when asked if he would trust information Karim Kuzbari a 6th grader answered, Never! [short pause] Well sometimes. So we trust what we think is trust worthy, but computers were apparently never meant to be telling us so much.

A necessary Evil

Nowadays it can no longer be denied that computers and technology have become an important part in the lives of our species. We use it to communicate, for entertainment and to get work done efficiently. Computers are important for collecting, handling and sharing information, says Christopher Buck, who works with computers every day for the American Embassy in Vienna, Austria.

Information is very important to humans as a species, we survive by knowing. But are computers really making us smarter? And is the risk of using such a strong and adaptable tool small enough for us to casually cast aside? Computers have become a constant part of our lives, but how much can we, and should we rely on them?

Computers are important for collecting, handling and sharing information.

Imprisoned by the Computer

So how do computers put their spell on us? Computers help us find information through the internet. There is so much information out there that people often ignore sources of information right next to them. Adding to this there are always new programs coming out that do more and more tasks, but do we really need

What were the Inventors thinking?

I think there is a world market for maybe five computers," said Thomas Watson, Chairman of the IBM, 1943. But now in 2013 not only do we

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to have a software for every problem? Each and every one of us has a software program to figure out almost every problem there is; our brain. But the revolution in technology has trained us to use our brains as little as possible. We have started to become prisoners of our technology. When we have a simple math problem we reach for the calculator instead of a piece of scrap paper. When we want to look up or prove something we search it on the web instead of finding a book. However, Christopher Buck also says Theres a difference between information and knowledge. You can find much more information than you ever would have needed in a blink, but a computer will feed you false information without a second thought.

Computer: Mans Best Friend?

Computers could lead us into a terrible future.

can store tons of information and make it easily accessible, they let you edit your work immediately. They dont tire from monotonous work and they never get bored. Most importantly they can get information from one place to another very quickly. In this way they could do a lot of things for us in the future. They could take over boring jobs, keep records, do chores for us; in general we would trust them to do a lot of things. However robots and computers have glitches, and if they ever do mess up, they dont care. A machine could do horrible things and not even notice. It does not care about anything, it knows the truth about nothing, and it even slowly kills itself as it works. Plus they are very powerful; they can do very precise jobs, but if they mess up, the precision goes wrong, and things can get destroyed, records can be lost and people could die because of the glitch and the robot or computer that did it, would probably not even notice. Computers could lead us into a terrible future. So people should find more things to rely on.

Where Might Computers lead us?

So where is humanity going if we are using computers to replace and not enhance our knowledge and common sense? If computers are doing all work for us what will happen if they stop working? There have been many science fiction stories about computers taking over the world, in the movie the Terminator robots can build themselves and capture humans and

Many Sci-Fi stories tell of Computers taking over.

use them as their source of electricity. In the movie I robot robots start attacking the people that have already grown completely dependent on them. However, in the computers formidableness also lies their usefulness, they

Dreams for the Future

Many science fiction stories tell tales of computers taking over the human race. And many a hope for the future would put computers in a

Computer: Mans Best Friend?

position of power. People would want computers and robots to take over boring jobs and to do a variety of tasks for humans, but what if they mess up? When people first started programming they had no idea that the tiniest flaws In a program could cause major glitches. However computers do have the capability to work relentlessly at solving problems. They could be the key to major breakthroughs in the future. But is it really the case that we need more and more programs to help us. As far as what normal people want to do with computers we dont need much more than what we already have at the moment. Of course people 50 years from now might be saying the same thing.

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The tiniest flaws in a program could cause major glitches.

Conclusion
So computers may be able to help us and we sure use them a lot. But we are becoming very reliant on them, and it doesnt feel like its just going to be a short fad. What we all just need to know is that, computers dont hold all the answers to happiness and success.

Computers dont hold all the answers to happiness.

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Computer: Mans Best Friend?

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