问答题
In our increasingly complex world, information is becoming the basic building block of the society. (46) However, at a time when the acquisition of new scientific information alone is approaching a rate of 250 million pages annually, the tide of knowledge is. overwhelming the human capability of dealing with it. So man must turn to a machine if he hopes to contain the tide and channel it to beneficial ends.
(47) The electronic computer, handling millions of facts with the swiftness of light, has given contemporary meaning to Aristotle’s vision of the liberating possibilities of machines: "When looms weave by themselves, man’s slavery will end." By transforming the way in which he gathers, stores, retrieves, and uses information, this versatile instrument is helping man to overcome his mental and physical limitations. (48) It is vastly widening his intellectual horizon, enabling him better to comprehend his universe, and providing the means to master that portion of it lying within his reach.
Although we are only in the second decade of electronic date processing, the outlines of its influence on our culture are beginning to e merge. (49) Far from depersonalizing the individual and dehumanizing his society, the computer promises a degree of personalized service never before available to mankind.
By the end of century, for the equipment of a few dollars a month, the individual will have a vast complex of computer services at his command. Information utilities will make computing power available, like electricity, to thousands of users simultaneously. (50) The computer in the home will be joined a national and global computer system that provides services ranging from banking and travel facilities to library research and medical care. High-speed communication devices, linked to satellites in space, will transmit data to and from virtually any point on earth with the ease of a dial system.
计算机不仅远远不会使个人失去个性，也不会使人类社会失去人性，相反地，可指望计算机在某种程度上完成前所未有的拟人活动。