ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, February 12, 1996 TAG: 9602130089
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: PHILADELPHIA
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
note: below
Never touched a computer?
Obviously you don't drive, use a telephone, watch television, use a dishwasher or make coffee. And you save your money under your bed, not at a bank.
``You go into a car, you got 500 computers in there. You press a button, and all kinds of things happen,'' said Pennsylvania State University professor Rustum Roy, who says computers are as vital to society as electricity. ``It's endemic.''
Half a century ago, ENIAC - the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer - was introduced at the University of Pennsylvania, counting to 5,000 in less than a second. The 50-ton goliath became the world's first general-purpose electronic computer.
Today, computers are unavoidable, essential, fundamental parts of our daily existence, so entrenched that we can't even see them anymore.
Computers price produce at supermarket checkout lines, control the clocks on microwave ovens and VCRs, and make remote control possible. They predict weather and the stock market, allow planes to land, and help missiles reach their destinations.
Computer chips have turned televisions and stereos into ``entertainment centers'' with remotes and digital sound. They adjust the temperature of your car and control dishwashers' cycles.
``Computers are embedded in almost all of our day-to-day technologies,'' said Roy, who heads Penn State's department of science, technology and society.
ENIAC was created to help U.S. military forces calculate firing tables needed to aim artillery in World War II. It yielded a line of mainframe computers that began to calculate bigger and bigger numbers. The machines gradually became smaller, faster and cheaper, eventually being squeezed onto silicon chips.
In the 1980s, personal computers gave employees the option of working from home and made it possible to make plane reservations, order pizza and pay bills with a monitor and a modem.
Computers have reduced most banking errands to roadside stops at automatic teller machines. A 1995 study by Deloitte & Touche Consulting Group predicted that half the country's bank branches will close in the next decade as more people turn to ATMs or use home-computer programs to balance checkbooks.
``It's changed the nature of money, because now we don't need currency anymore. It's just information,'' said Frank Woosley, national director of financial service consulting at Deloitte & Touche.
The telephone also will never be the same. Bell Atlantic Corp. computers have replaced most directory-assistance operators in five states. Callers can press numbers on their telephone to find out movie listings, mall hours, plane schedules.
``Just press a few buttons to find out if Flight 29 is arriving on time,'' said Gwen Bell, president of the Computer Museum in Boston. ``Press in the flight numbers. If you don't know the flight numbers, press in the first three letters of the city.''
Can the world be too computerized? Yes, says Paul Helfrich, director of interactive information systems at The Franklin Institute science museum in Philadelphia.
``They've snuck up on us, and we don't realize it,'' he said. ``It's a means and not an end. It's still wonderful to go where there's not any telephones or radios, and you go to the beach and you listen to the waves.''
LENGTH: Medium: 69 linesby CNB