The true power of the computer

He should know -- he's built computers from tinkertoys!

Saafir

These days, computers are popularly thought of as multimedia devices, capable of incorporating and combining all previous forms of media -- text, graphics, moving pictures, sound. I think this view leads to an underestimation of the computer's potential. It is certainly true that a computer can incorporate and manipulate all other media, but the true power of the computer is that it is capable of manipulating not just the expression of ideas but also the ideas themselves. The amazing thing to me is not that a computer can hold the contents of all the books in a library but that it can notice relationships between the concepts described in the books -- not that it can display a picture of a bird in flight or a galaxy spinning but that it can imagine and predict the consequences of the physical laws that create these wonders. The computer is not just an advanced calculator or camera or paintbrush; rather, it is a device that accelerates and extends our processes of thought. It is an imagination machine, which starts with the ideas we put into it and takes them farther than we ever could have taken them on our own.

-- Daniel Hillis The Pattern on the Stone: The Simple Ideas that Make Computers Work (New York: Basic Books,1998) pg XI