It's Groundhog Day, and we're all living in a time loop, reliving the past over and over again until we get it right. There's actually quite a few things I'd like to go back and do over again until I get them right. But I don't want to get into that right now or you'll be bored to tears.
So long as I'm living in the past, though, I'll tell you about a story I read a long time ago that had a particularly strong impact on my very young brain.
It was 1970 or '71. I was in 1st or 2nd grade -- I really can't remember which, but thanks to my book-loving parents, like my siblings I was reading at a very high level for someone so young; by 2nd grade, I was in a special 2-person reading group reading at a 6th grade level -- and my teacher had given me a book containing a set of stories (an anthology). I don't recall any of the other stories, probably because they didn't have anything to do with science or technology, and I was completely obsessed with those subjects as a child. But there was this one story that stayed with me.
You have to remember that the story was written in the mid 60s when computers were cabinet-sized monstrosities and filled entire rooms, and were attended by teams of geeks in white lab coats, or white shirts and ties with pocket protectors (the long-haired geeks with the sandals didn't show up til '67 or '68); and the 'users' were business people who typed up punch cards or paper tapes and fed them to the machines like sacrifices and then waited for their 'jobs' to run on the 'queue' so they could then receive their 'printouts' indicating the results they of the program(s) they had run.
In this story, a young school-aged girl whose mother worked in an office somehow managed to finagle access to the computer and used it to do her math homework. Her mother had given her some rudimentary training as part of showing her daughter what she did for a living, and the girl was able to use this knowledge to complete her assignments without much effort, unlike her peers.
Unfortunately, at some point she started getting the wrong answers on her homework, so she brings her mother the homework paper which has been marked up by the teacher (in red ink, I presume) and bemoans the fact that there is obviously something wrong with the computer.
The mother informs her daughter that there is nothing wrong with the computer, but there is something wrong with her understanding of how a computer works.
As her mother explains, it soon became clear that, although the computer may be faster than a human, it is not smarter. It can only do what it is programmed to do, and if you don't know how to ask the question, or you ask the wrong question, you will get the wrong answer.
The takeaway lesson for the young girl -- and the reader -- is that a computer is only a tool, and a tool is only as smart as the person using it.
So, in the end, the girl was properly ashamed that she had taking advantage of this wonderful, space-age tool when none of her peers had the opportunity to do so. As her mother pointed out, it was not fair. And like all good morality tales, the girl admitted her mistake and thereafter determined to learn how to do things herself (manually) before using the computer again.
This was the first time I recall coming to terms with the fact that computers are really nothing more than glorified calculators. It was a far cry from the impression given by all those silly movies we'd seen, like The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes and Desk Set, or in those Science Fiction television shows (e.g. Star Trek, Lost In Space), where computers were magical beings with unlimited knowledge.
It was also the first time I thought perhaps it might be possible to understand how they worked. And maybe even to learn to use them.
This idea would come in very handy in the years to come...
So long as I'm living in the past, though, I'll tell you about a story I read a long time ago that had a particularly strong impact on my very young brain.
It was 1970 or '71. I was in 1st or 2nd grade -- I really can't remember which, but thanks to my book-loving parents, like my siblings I was reading at a very high level for someone so young; by 2nd grade, I was in a special 2-person reading group reading at a 6th grade level -- and my teacher had given me a book containing a set of stories (an anthology). I don't recall any of the other stories, probably because they didn't have anything to do with science or technology, and I was completely obsessed with those subjects as a child. But there was this one story that stayed with me.
You have to remember that the story was written in the mid 60s when computers were cabinet-sized monstrosities and filled entire rooms, and were attended by teams of geeks in white lab coats, or white shirts and ties with pocket protectors (the long-haired geeks with the sandals didn't show up til '67 or '68); and the 'users' were business people who typed up punch cards or paper tapes and fed them to the machines like sacrifices and then waited for their 'jobs' to run on the 'queue' so they could then receive their 'printouts' indicating the results they of the program(s) they had run.
In this story, a young school-aged girl whose mother worked in an office somehow managed to finagle access to the computer and used it to do her math homework. Her mother had given her some rudimentary training as part of showing her daughter what she did for a living, and the girl was able to use this knowledge to complete her assignments without much effort, unlike her peers.
Unfortunately, at some point she started getting the wrong answers on her homework, so she brings her mother the homework paper which has been marked up by the teacher (in red ink, I presume) and bemoans the fact that there is obviously something wrong with the computer.
The mother informs her daughter that there is nothing wrong with the computer, but there is something wrong with her understanding of how a computer works.
As her mother explains, it soon became clear that, although the computer may be faster than a human, it is not smarter. It can only do what it is programmed to do, and if you don't know how to ask the question, or you ask the wrong question, you will get the wrong answer.
The takeaway lesson for the young girl -- and the reader -- is that a computer is only a tool, and a tool is only as smart as the person using it.
So, in the end, the girl was properly ashamed that she had taking advantage of this wonderful, space-age tool when none of her peers had the opportunity to do so. As her mother pointed out, it was not fair. And like all good morality tales, the girl admitted her mistake and thereafter determined to learn how to do things herself (manually) before using the computer again.
This was the first time I recall coming to terms with the fact that computers are really nothing more than glorified calculators. It was a far cry from the impression given by all those silly movies we'd seen, like The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes and Desk Set, or in those Science Fiction television shows (e.g. Star Trek, Lost In Space), where computers were magical beings with unlimited knowledge.
It was also the first time I thought perhaps it might be possible to understand how they worked. And maybe even to learn to use them.
This idea would come in very handy in the years to come...