The Computer Generation (From Mr NANA, Provincial High School of Kaya)

The precise orderly steps of logic are required to use and program computers ; to create – and sharpen the thought processes of the computer generation. Indeed, the youngsters playing computer games are doing precisely what corporations do when they plan to launch a new product or what military leaders do when they devise strategies to confront a potential foe.

Whether such abilities will change the world for the better is another matter. Some critics predict a future not unlike that portrayed in Isaac Asimov’s “I, Robot”, a Science fiction novel set in a Society so thoroughly computer-dominated that the people cannot do arithmetic. Humanist critic George Steiner calls the computers generation, the advanced guard of a breed of “computer-mutants”. “They will be out of touch with certain springs of human identity and creativity, which belong to the full use of language rather than mathematical and symbolical codes”, says Steiner.

Many others are much more optimistic. University of Chicago philosopher of Science, Stephen Toulmin predicts that computers will “re-intellectualize” the television generation.
“T.V relieved People of the necessity to do anything”, says Toulmin.

“Computers depend on what you do yourself”. Catholic theologian David Tracy argues that “Using computers sharpens the mind’s ability to deal with our world : the world of technology”.