Online NewsHour: Hoffman on the computer

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: We have some thoughts on the computer at 50 now from our essayist and science contributor, Paul Hoffman, editor of "Discover" Magazine. Paul, you've been listening to Elizabeth's segment, as well as the one I just completed. What does that tell you about all this discussion about where computers are today, 50 years after their introduction into society?

PAUL HOFFMAN, Discover Magazine: Well, it's interesting how far we've come in 50 years. If you go back to that very first computer, the ENIAC, and that's why they're playing this computer chess match in Philadelphia, because that's where the ENIAC discussion

was created 50 years ago. You know, it took up a gigantic room. It weighed 30 tons. It had 17,000 vacuum tubes, you know, those big glowing tubes that used to power our television, and all of them had to be working at once for the computer to do anything. They were constantly blowing out like 4th of July fireworks, and it didn't work very well. That computer could do about a thousand calculations per second. Today, a computer that sits on a desk top or at home can do fifty thousand more calculations than that. So we have come a long way. And the IBM Deep Blue computer is an amazing accomplishment, that it's as good as the best chess masters at chess. But, remember, that computer is specifically designed to do chess. That's the only thing it can do. You and I are amateurs. We can do all sorts of things well. We can recognize the faces of people on streets. If I say to you, what's a flower that rhymes with hose, instantly you know I mean rose. No computer in the world can do that instantly.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: So what are you saying? I mean, are we--are you saying that we're not anywhere close to the original goal?

MR. HOFFMAN: Right. The original goal was to design computers that can think like you and I do. That's not been--no one's done anything like that.

MR. HOFFMAN: Exactly. Instead--and I don't mean to detract from these accomplishments, because it is an accomplishment, computer scientists have designed computers that are very good at specific tasks. A computer can decide where to drill for oil, and it will strike oil much more often than the geologist doing those same calculations. But it can't, you know, it can't speak, can't understand us.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: In our earlier debate, we heard some of the tensions that computers are creating, and we also, you know, have heard some of the hopes for the triumph of human ingenuity, as Mr. Tan put it. I mean, how do you see the tensions as well--and problems as well as the challenges?

MR. HOFFMAN: Okay, one of the challenges, of course, as anyone who works in an office with computers knows, when you depend on them, and they crash, you have a discussion

problem. Even the computer that's playing Garry Kasparov crashed for 10 minutes yesterday. If they hadn't fixed it, it would have lost the game. We know that happens to New York traffic control systems. We know that happens to the phone system. So that's a little drawback in it, but you've got to realize now that computers are behind the scenes in our lives in all sorts of ways. If you have a pacemaker, there's a little computer chip inside it. Your car, it's designed by computers that run a factory. There are computer chips in the engine of a car that govern fuel ignition, that govern your brakes, so they're everywhere, not just sitting on your desks. I mean, the world has become entirely dependent on computers in a very subtle way.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: And yet, the President today talked about trying to get computers in every school, and there's been this big debate about, you know, access, saying that, you know, people say that there is a have and have-not situation, where a small percentage of the people have computers and they have the advantages and a larger percentage, is that--don't have them--is that going to be a big problem in the future, you think?

MR. HOFFMAN: It's definitely a serious issue. I mean, you need to learn how to use a computer to go into today's job market. Kids need to learn them. There's wonderful educational software, and if your school has a computer, you can use it, and if your school doesn't, you're deprived. The question, though, is: How do we solve this? And it doesn't seem to me it's that hard. The price of these machines is coming down astronomically. I mean, remember when pocket calculators cost 200 bucks. Now they're just a few bucks. The same will happen with PC's, so if there's some sort of a collaboration between private industry and the government, we could get computers into poor schools and give every kid an equal opportunity.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Briefly, this is a terrible question to ask you, with just a few seconds left, but I mean, is there any succinct way to say where this whole technology is headed in the future?

MR. HOFFMAN: I think it's headed, the computers are going to be completely universal. Soon they'll be shrunk to the point where you may have a computer in your wallet. You go into a hotel, instead of checking in, it automatically sends you to a room, that card in your wallet will open the door to your hotel, and you'd get in, or instead of, you know, when you go through a toll booth, that computer in your wallet will deduct money from your account, rather than your throwing money into a little bin. That's being done in a piled way. So we're going to see more and more of computers. discussion

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50 YEARS LATER

FEBRUARY 15, 1996

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