Computers

Computers Computers have made life easier for the human race. Americans today take for granted the great impact the computer has on their lives, making things easier, faster, and more convenient for them. Computers helped the world a lot and helped us take a large step into the future. Almost anything you know is run or made by computers, industry, cars, jets, and ect. Computers are the most important innovations in history, without computers the world would not be able to function in the manner today that people are accustom to. Before there were electronic computers most of the tasks we now do with a computer were done other ways. Computers today have replaced many of the roles that people had once done manually. This is both a positive and a negative, people are losing the jobs they once fulfilled and being replaced by this intelligent machine. It is also creating new opportunities for technology in the workplace and creating new types of jobs involving the computer. "People were once necessary to make written entries, keep accounts, make copies of documents, and do mechanical work" (Aspray 9). Instead of a hard drive on the computer, brains were used to store and manipulate information. The major position that humans were replaced in as computers erupted was clerical work or a clerk. Many of the tasks performed today require the use of computers, but there was actually a time when they were not necessary. Years ago there was no such thing as a word processor, letters, and reports were all handwritten or produced on a typewriter. When people needed to find information on something, there was no internet to search, but yet a library filled with books for them to peruse. Communication was also quite different, use of the telephone or what is now referred to as "snail" mail, when sending letters through the mail. In the poem "Life before computers," it humorously states ways in which life was different and has changed before the invention of

Cited: Aspray, William, and Martin Campbell-Kelly. Computer. New York: BasicBooks, 1996. Lewis, Alfred. The New World of Computers. New York: Dodd, Mead, and Company, 1965. Publish Co. 1984.