What computers can and can’t do

We are constantly reminded that computers are just tools, and we could add very important tools to contemporary society. Computers have no life, cant think and can be just as usefully used as paper weights as they can be for compiling information or working out mathematical problems. A gun is also a tool that can be used to send a projectile from A to B in a straight line. As with computers, the main thing about a gun, as with all technology, is not so much the transportation of metal through space, but who happens to be in control of the trigger and which end is pointing at you.

We need also to keep an eye on what technology undoes as well as does. We should never be reliant on any one creative medium over another, especially those that can be controlled by the few, we should be using and encouraging the use of all media to their full potential.

The capacity of the human brain to thin outshines even the most powerful computer. The tools of technology are an asset in helping to organise and disseminate data that can be used to create and build useful things that improve our lives, not to think for us, not to replace human interaction, kinship and sociability. We sometimes need to ask are the tools suitable to the task at hand or merely being used to assuage rather than deal with critical problems?