A 1956 encyclopaedia's view on the computer

Regarding evolution, I believe the denial of evolution is something characteristic for american evangelicals. Most other christian denomination either accept evolution or doesn't really have an opinion on it, and AFAIK it is not really a major discussion outside of the US.

<i>Human language, on the other hand, has an infinite number of "nuances", and as such, a "translation computer will never be able to give a sufficiently satisfying solution". Since I make my living translating texts, I can certainly attest to this very fact.</i><p>I don't agree with that. I think machine translation is a very difficult problem, but I don't think it is impossible. We are just getting started to do research on it. It is only since the 90ies that we have the computing resources which are necessary to build statistical, data-driven machine translation software like Google Translate, and it is only since the mid-2000s this approach became mainstream.<p><i>If the computer were to end up and remain in the hands of a small elite, e.g. of a dictator, [the computer's] power will make the common man powerless and utterly submissive. And this tyranny will be introduced under the guise of the advancement of human well-being.</i><p>I was thinking maybe a cynical person would say that the power of the internet is the actually is in the hands of a few right now (namely Google and Facebook).

As a side note, it was only a few years before this (in 1949) that Robert Busa approached IBM's Tom Watson with the idea of using a computer to make a concordance (of the works of Thomas Aquinas). Tom apparently said it was impossible (IBM was a number-crunching business, and parsing huge volumes of text was an entirely new field). Luckily the company's motto at the time was: “What's difficult we can do straight away, the impossible takes a little longer”<p>The project is noted by many as the beginning of a computational approach to literature.

"Sadly, Van Riesen passed away in 2000, but had he still been alive, I would have tried to get into contact with him."<p>Contact his students.

When I was reading this, I couldn't stop thinking about the fact that we no longer have paper encyclopedias. (For the most part. There are still some, but I think their very nature is different.) It's kind of depressing.<p>In 60 years, no one will write about Wikipedia articles in this key. Not just because it's digital, but because it's biased, full of edit wars and topic exclusions.

"What struck me most about the entry was Van Riesen's philosophical approach to the matter, which is remarkably prescient of the challenges we, as the human race, face with how to deal with the computer"<p>His opinion wasn't at all prescient. Computing gave unprecedented power to the people. It has absolutely never been a source of oppression.

Y'know, for an article entitled "A 1956 encyclopaedia's view on the computer" I was kinda hoping for something that included more than one paragraph of quotes from the 1956 encyclopaedia.