“Perhaps the most revolutionary development in recent years has been that of the computer. Because for the first time we’ve discovered a machine that can substitute, at least in part, the human brain. Before that, it was just a matter of saving human muscles, of using machinery to spare what human muscles couldn’t do very well. And computers come in all sizes because they have been getting smaller and smaller. We’ve have these tiny little micro-chips now, and as a result every industry, the government itself, tax collecting agencies, airplanes, everything depends on computers. We have personal computers in the home, and they are constantly getting better, cheaper, more versatile, capable of doing more things. So that we can look into a future, one for the first time humanity in general will be free of all kinds of work that is really an insult to the complex human brain, that requires no great thought, no great creativity. Leave all that to the computer, and we can leave to ourselves those things that computers can’t do. Such things as imagination, creativity, fantasy, intuition, problem solving where we don’t have to have the exact conditions and know exactly what’s happening, we have an intuitive field for what the solution ought to be. No computer can do that.”
—Isaac Asimov
