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From: jab@uokvax.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.college
Subject: Re: Does someone REALLY belive this?
Message-ID: <12500005@uokvax.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 9-Nov-84 19:49:00 EST
Article-I.D.: uokvax.12500005
Posted: Fri Nov  9 19:49:00 1984
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Nf-From: uokvax!jab    Nov  9 18:49:00 1984

/***** uokvax:net.college / oddjob!matt /  2:02 am  Nov  8, 1984 */
Ken Hollis quotes from a newspaper:
> Why don't we start calculating what these machines are doing?  If we don't,
> we may have scientific and sophisticated equipment with no one knowledgeable
> enough to use it.
/* ---------- */

I'm reminded of the user at the computer center at my school that would
run programs THREE TIMES before looking at the output, since "the computer
is less reliable than humans".

You're right; there are many science fiction stories in which a culture
knows nothing about the technology surrounding it except that "I push
'this button' and 'that' happens." I remember with some fondness that my
high school chemistry teacher REFUSED to let us use calculators for homework
and tests, insisting on sliderules. In high school, I was taught that
	arccos(1) = 2*pi*n		(n an integer)
	arcsin(1) = pi/2 + 2*pi*n	(n an integer)
and can't help but laugh when a TI59 tells me that there's exactly one
solution to the equation.

On the other hand, it seems silly to ignore the speed of these nifty toys.
Would you prefer that we have a gaggle of accountants verify the calculations
made by *ALL* those bank transactions every day? Would you prefer to have 
human operators instead of electronic switching?

I seem to remember reading that in the case of the latter, most of the
population of this country would work for the phone companies!

	Jeff Bowles
	Lisle, IL