Could we live without computers?

Have you ever wondered how the the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans and the Mongols, all managed to have very large empires that covered continents without the benefit of computers?

These days it seems, computer companies are trying to give everyone the message that without their wonderful hardware and software in YOUR home, you will find it difficult to get up in the morning, make your breakfast and get through your day.

The reality is that the power of advertising has so infiltrated our psyche that many people are actually believing this guff and becoming more and more helpless and dependent upon the technology.

Look at the increase in the number of people who use calculators and are simply unable to do sums in their head. Look at the people who "simply cannot do without" a PDA (a personal digital assistant). Look at people who have a university education and cannot string a sentence together without the benefit of a grammar and spell checker in their word processing programs.

When was the last time you were in a store and found someone on the staff who actually knew how to calculate a 15% discount when you asked for it?

When was the last time you actually saw a handwritten letter?

When was the last time you saw a senior executive in a company who made a decision without first consulting some management "guru" whether in person, through an agency that provides the services of such 'gurus' or by reading advice from a 'guru' in some magazine or other?

I am more convinced than ever that those who are pushing to get us back to a time in which people were required to think for themselves instead of relying on a computed solution are right.

A computer is an idiot savant. It can only provide you with 'answers' that are part of its programming and the data that has been input into the system. If you have a system that has been badly designed or has had inaccurate data entered into it then you have the 'garbage in - garbage out' phenomenon.

I am seeing around me more and more people who are unable to think for themselves, people who really believe in the depth of their hearts that working things out for yourself is the wrong way to do anything and that the right way is to buy a service or a product that will do the work for you.

As we head further and further into this kind of scenario, I am also seeing teachers who do not know their subject matter and thus are only able to impart to the children that they are 'teaching' what little they know. This results in graduates of their programs who are to all extents and purposes functionally illiterate.

There was a film in the early 1960's that I always thought of as a spoof on the future as developed by IBM. It showed a house in which virtually everything was controlled by computers right down to the doors of the house. People pushed buttons and things happened.

Then one day the electricity failed!

People died in their houses because they could not work out how to open doors when the button they pushed did not work. They could not cook because all of their computerised cooking equipment was on the fritz. Their sewerage backed up because the computerised waste management system did not work and so on.

We are not there yet - thank goodness.

I have terrible fear that we are heading in this direction and I wonder if we are able to stop ourselves from arriving!