Компьютерная техника. Еремина Н.В. - 22 стр.

4 UNIT IV

      The computer revolution

      “The computer, with its promise of a millionfold in man's capacity to handle
information, will undoubtedly have the most far-teaching social consequence of any
contemporary technical development. The potential for good in the computer and the
danger inhexent in its misuse exceed our ability to imagiae… . We have actually entered
a new era of evolutionary history, one in which rapid change is a dominant consequence.
Our only hope is to understand the farces at work and to take advantage of the
knowledge we find to        guide the evolutionary process.”


                                                                     Dr. Jerome B. Weisner

    4.1 The paper says that the 21st century would be impossible without the
computer. Do you think the same way ? What reasons does the author give in
favor of his opinion? Read the passage below attentively and find all the fact in
favor of the idea.

       Without the computer space programs would be impossible and the 21st
century would be impossible. The incredible technology we are building, the
complexity and the knowledge we are amassing on the way toward the creation of
that not-so-far-off 21st century, are all beyond the unaided mind and muscle of man.
More that any other single invention, perhaps even more that wheel, the computer
offers a promise so dazzling and a threat so awful that it will forever change the
direction and meaning of our lives.
      Computers today are running our factories, planning our cities, teaching our
children, and forecasting the possible future we may be heir to.
      In the new age of exploration the computer is solving in milliseconds the problems a
generation of mathematicians would need years to solve without its help. The small, fifty-
nine-pound computer, which takes up only one cubic foot of space in the vehicle will do all
of the mathematics needed to solve one billion different space-manoeuvring, navigation,
and re-rentry problems. Moreover, it translates the answer into simple numbers and tells
the astronaut the attitude to which he must bring the spacecraft before firing the thrusters,
and indicate to him exactly how long they must be fired.
      Even before a rocket is launched, it is flown from ten to a hundred times through
space-computer-simulated space – on flights constructed of mathematical symbols, on
trajectories built of information bits, encountering hazards that are numbers without