Computer Overkill?

What do scientists really need from a computer? I suggest that there are many physicists whose only computer needs are straightforward programming, a good graphics routine, a good text-processing routine, reliable and easily readable e-mail, and, probably, easy access to the Internet. I suspect that many physicists, like myself, are not the least bit interested in the finer points of computing technology or fancy graphics; they find that most of the recent computing innovations offered to--or perhaps pushed at--them are unnecessary.

Journals want us to submit our papers in some special format or another. It is not our job to produce such files; journal staff include, or should include, text-processing experts. Colorful conference posters may be pleasant works of art but it is doubtful if a poster can say much more than several sheets of paper containing good black and white figures with some simple explanatory text and possibly one or two figures that require color. Regrettably, some students imagine that computing is science rather than technology.

Members of the scientific community should make their needs clearly understood both to the computing industry and, equally important, to systems managers who are apt to be carried away by each innovation. Of course, there are individual special needs but, for most of us, the VAX/ VMS supplied our needs in an efficient and understandable manner.

Cheers for Richard Hammond, who challenges the visionary image of a brave new world run by Internet and computer "culture" (see Physics Today, February 2001, page 14). It is indeed time to steer clear of quicksilver medicines and instead "channel our finances and our creative energy toward a real improvement in education, and not a virtual one." How severely the psychedelic vision of an "information-dominated society" has already infected our lives is well illustrated, ironically, by an article in the same issue of Physics Today (page 24) where we learn about "a new undergraduate college that will be 'born wireless,' " that is, "students will experiment, and be an experiment, with being hooked to the Internet all the time." Moreover, the students will possess a device that will "continuously transmit and receive information to tell students . . . where to find their friends or professors (and vice versa) . . . and where they can find a parking spot." Who needs that? Who pays the cost? Why?

In that same article, we read of the nightmare vision of a "smart house" in which everything is done by computers, "from adjusting lighting, temperature, and music to transmitting the blood pressure and weight of the house's occupants to a medical clinic." George Orwell's apocalyptic vision 1984 was a nursery story compared with such a horror--which, unfortunately, is in our grasp.

About nine years ago, I wrote some memoirs, and "saved" them on then-current computer diskettes. Recently a publisher showed interest in the text, but told me that current computers cannot use the old normal- density diskettes. So, with some expense and trouble, I had the text transferred to a single high-density disk. But as it turned out, it was all no use, because the word-processing software, at the time the best available, is now completely obsolete! Funny, not long ago one could read without much trouble Egyptian, Sanskrit, and Aramaic texts that were several thousand years old. Now, we can't even read something nine years old. Where are we heading?