From a very broad overview perspective, one might say that there are three fundamental ways in which computers have affected our lives: time compression, information explosion, and societal changes in the nature of work performed. These topics are considered individually, though briefly, in this overview.
People brought up in today's world may find it hard to realize the fundamental nature of changes effected by computers in terms of time compression. However, one does not have to look far to recognize that the importance of time is a factor that computers have affected significantly. In the financial world, the term float refers to checks that have been cashed by the recipient, but not yet charged to the original check-writer's account number. Float has been significantly reduced as a factor in financial circles, because it is now possible to accomplish a much larger percentage of transactions automatically (electronically), avoiding the costly process of processing checks manually and transferring them from one bank to another. This time factor has made it possible to process huge volumes of stock sales daily, at least an order of magnitude more than was possible with manual methods. In fact, new rules in the New York Stock Exchange now curb automatic computer-generated selling based on sudden drops in Dow-Jones average (it has been necessary to introduce a new automatic 30-minute delay when the Dow drops more than a fixed number of points (about 40) in a short period of time). Telephone switching systems, now computer-controlled, permit a volume of voice phone traffic that would have required more than half of the population of the country to service using older manual systems. Information relayed by computers instantly from one continent to another makes it possible to have one stock exchange (e.g., the one in Japan) respond immediately (or wait for news) when significant changes are expected to take place in other markets. International politics are profoundly affected by the availability of computer networks; the massacre in Tian An Men Square in June 1989 and the failed coup in Russia in 1991 are two examples of events whose outcome was significantly affected by computer network news beyond the control of persons in authority in those countries relayed to outside sources and effectively preventing the imposing of a veil of secrecy that characterized many earlier historical events controlled by powers in one nation.
One final but very important point to make with respect to time compression. The half life of information is also changing: i.e., half of the information presented to you during your college education may become obsolete within a period ranging from 4 to 8 years. If you accept this notion, what do you propose to do about your own learning as a result? Will you change your major, switching to something that appears to have a greater chance for marketability in the future? Will you develop life-long learning habits, so that, even if the information you received in college is becoming obsolete, you have prepared yourself to maintain your learning skills throughout your life? If you have not thought about these points, now might be a good time to start.
The examples of time compression's effect on our lives as achieved by computers are nearly endless. Search for them yourselves, and you will see that no field is unaffected by this influence.
Computers can store data in ways that vastly exceed the capacity of humans to absorb it. The changes that began when Gutenberg developed the printing press (actually, the Chinese had invented this technology years before) have been accelerated at bewildering speed in the last two to three decades. Estimates of the time it takes for "information" in the world to double in quantity have shrunk from pre-computer estimates of 15 to 20 years in industrial society to less than 7 years today. The "rate of change" of most fields has been affected, even those like medieval studies or ancient history, owing to the ability of many researchers to make their findings more widely available than ever before. In some fields (including computer science) the "timeliness" of formal journals is even called into question, because conference papers usually contain more recent and up-to-date information. There are now literally several thousand abstracting services, covering tens of thousands of journals and texts on nearly every subject known to man. Where it used to be possible to read the literature in a given field and "keep up," that possibility has now been completely bypassed by the explosion of information sources made possible through computers. Television has played an important role, but its effect on written information is minimal, whereas the computer figures centrally in all publication activities today. The full effect of this information explosion has yet to be felt. Education today is still based more on memorization than is truly necessary. Learning is also based more on manual techniques, even though there are methods available today to replace a large portion of the manual techniques used to acquire knowledge of many real world situations.
One important way in which information can be made more immediately accessible to learners is by the simulation of real world events, as discussed in an earlier lecture. Modeling and simulation allow students and researchers to study the effects of many different types of experiments (chemical, physiological, economic, even social) by simulating them on computers and observing the result without having to conduct a real experiment. If one assumes that the knowledge gained from performing a live experiment amounts to one-tenth of the total information that should be learned from the experiment, then computer simulation, which allows ten or a hundred such experiments to be performed in the same time period would enable the learner to concentrate more directly on the results of the experiment rather than the experimental process.
We may conclude, therefore, that the use of computers to make even more information available is continuing to accelerate, and the rate of information doubling will be reduced still further in the years ahead. How that change will affect learning and working remains to be seen.
A point that is not entirely accepted by many faculty in the system that relates to the acceleration of information accumulation: It is no longer valid to place heavy emphasis on memorization. For one thing, there are now far too many facts in almost any discipline to expect human minds to retain them. Second, with the computer available, we can change our way of handling many facts, relying on the computer's capacity for much of this storage, and using our minds for information analysis, synthesis, judgment, and other high levels of cerebration that pure recall. You should start to think about the way you learn in this manner. You should also take on as your own responsibility the challenge of using computers to help you store information you don't feel belongs stored in your head. (It is quite likely that you will not get very much assistance from others such as faculty in this process.)
As computer-based information has become more prevalent, computer-based automation has dramatically changed the manufacturing industry, and our dependence on timely information has increased, the nature of jobs available today has changed in ways no less dramatic than the factors already cited. These changes require detailed analysis, a process that remains to be done effectively in most fields. However, some changes are apparent, and their influence is well understood.
Whereas jobs of fifty years ago were concentrated in the performance of productive tasks (manufacturing, building, farming with manual labor, etc.), there has been a profound shift to service-oriented jobs in the last few decades. More people are providing services that bear minimally on labor-intensive production: sales, advertising, communication, information services, financial services - the list goes on. Much of this change is due to the effect of computers. However, what remains to be sorted out is how management is going to respond to those changes. There are responsible analysts who claim that today's western-style pyramidal type management structure is obsolete; that employees dealing with more information available than ever before are now in a position to make management-related suggestions and decisions affecting overall production, despite the fact that they have not been accorded the responsibility or authority to carry out such tasks. A worker who is given an opportunity to study a manufacturing process is likely to spot ways that it can be improved more readily than a manger who has never been directly involved in the process. The Japanese seem to have adopted management styles that more effectively adapt to these changes; the western world seems to be lagging behind in this perception.
As you look around you, study the types of jobs available to our graduating students. What types of skills are they asked to demonstrate? In almost all cases, there is little room for college graduates (even males) who are not good at using keyboards. Basic skills in word processing are taken for granted in many white collar work environments; dictation is recognized as obsolete, even as new input methods are changing the way information is gathered today. These changes are not superficial; they are affecting our society deeply, raising questions about our education process, content, and expectations in ways that are only dimly perceived by many college educators today. You have been made aware of some of these topics, but you have not had an opportunity to study them in detail in this class. Perhaps you will want to bear them in mind as you continue with your education in the years ahead.
People are people. New environments will engender new behaviors that reflect the adaptation of long-established personality traits to a new vocabulary, work environment, or opportunities/temptations. Viewed from this perspective, the computer-related sociological acts that are reported daily in the papers are little more than new wrinkles on old behavior patterns. However, the capacity for more widespread and serious change (much of it potentially negative) is considerable, and we will undoubtedly discover new and horrendous ways in which behavior is modified by the availability of new tools for use and misuse. Many of these issues were described in the lecture on computer ethics.
This brief overview would not be complete if it did not end on a positive note relating to the opportunities that computers offer us. If we assume that the human mind is not really designed to serve as an infallible memory bank, but rather as an instrument for processing information, then we can see that the role that a computer might play in augmenting this role of the mind is considerable. If computer programs can be devised that allow us to think more creatively, use information stored by the computer to enable us to focus on the "big picture" or to test hypotheses that would otherwise be unthinkable, then we are paving the way for profound changes in the way we do our work. Computers have the potential to perform such miracles. We have only to provide them that opportunity.
There are indeed many ways that the computer is starting to fit into these types of applications. Sometimes systems of this type are called "Decision Support Systems." Sometimes they are based on "artificial intelligence" techniques, as described in a previous lecture. Some remarkable discoveries have been made about what computers can do. A new branch of the field, machine learning, offers a way that computer programs can "learn" in much the same way that the human brain learns from trial and error. These programs are starting to do some very interesting and unexpected things. One person, now retired from NASA, is making a comfortable living using neural nets to program horse race betting. They offer some promise in programs to recognize Chinese and Japanese characters scanned in to a computer. They are being used in medical decision systems, some of them with remarkable results.
Other forms of programming computers are also arising, and you will hear of some of these things in the years ahead. We can't tell you in what way these things will be taking place, but we can certainly guarantee that the next few decades will see a remarkable growth in technology and information science.
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