Computers and automation

IN THE BRIEF SPAN of years since the closing days of World War II, we have witnessed a technological development in computers of such broad proportions that it is still impossible to appraise its far reaching effects adequately. Perhaps, the best way to express the enormous influence of this revolution is simply to point out that practically all of man's actions in producing the necessities and luxuries of life fall into two categories, namely his mental and his physical work. All of his mental work has to do with the processing of information in some form or other, and the close relationship of the computer to the human brain and its functioning needs no elaboration here. It should have been expected that nearly all of the operations of the civilized world, in which the human brain is involved to a greater or lesser extent in carrying out the task, could be aided by a technological development which performs accurately and at high speed, some of the functions of the brain. This is variously called computing, or information- or data-processing. Its field of application is as broad as human knowledge and is far beyond the comprehension of any one individual. However, large teams of scientists and engineers are currently at work in many of these compartmented fields of knowledge, learning how to adapt and develop the automatic processing methods of the computer to the needs of their particular fields.