Ebook: Man and the Computer

John G. Kemeny presents a personalized view of what has happened in the first twenty-five years of modern computers. From this, he goes on to a critical evaluation of the present state of the art and the various applications of computers and concludes with an examination of what seems possible and likely to occur in the next twenty years and a description of several exciting new uses of computers which most of us will live to see. Dr. Kemeny believes that next to the original development of general-purpose high-speed computers the most important event was the coming of man-machine interaction. He feels that the true significance of computers in the future will be precisely in this teamwork of man and the computer. The author traces much of the criticism and distrust of computer systems to those systems in which computers operate on their own, and he knows from personal experience that users who work in a partnership with computers change their attitudes completely. Part One, The New Symbiosis, includes: A New Species Is Born, What Each Species Contributes, Time Sharing, Division of Labor, Symbiote or Parasite? Part Two, Symbiotic Evolution, includes: A Look at the Future, Computers in Education, Library of the Future, Computers as Management Tools, Computers in the Home, Solving the Problems of Society. Man and the Computer is an expanded version of the widely acclaimed Man and Nature Lectures delivered at The American Museum of Natural History in the fall of 1971.