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Necessary Computer Capability: Potential applications of the computer made possible by microelectronics include a small computer in every home or a pocket computer terminal that can be connected to a powerful central computer via the telephone. Such devices may be used to solve our numerical problems (e.g., income tax, or our bank balance) or as a creative tool to relate our knowledge and experiences to our future actions.
Anticipating the necessary computer capability, meteorologists are estimating the kinds and distribution of data required for precise descriptions of the atmosphere, and are designing practical systems of obtaining and feeding it into computers. Because the problem is essentially a global one, meteorologists have made strenuous efforts in recent years to cooperate at an international level.
And what of the computer? Olof Johannesson's 1966 novel, The Tale of the Big Computer (which first appeared in an American edition in 1968), offers a history of the development of computers as told by an advanced computer of the future. In an unemotional, utterly convincing essay, it describes the gradual obsolescence and disappearance of its creator, man.
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