Digital electronic computers were originally designed to solve problems that were too complex, repetitive, or time-sensitive to be efficiently handled by humans. During World War II, the Allied governments had a vested interest in the decoding of encrypted military communications. Naturally, the quicker this could be accomplished, the more effective counter strategies would be. One problem was that posed by the German Enigma cryptographic system, which easily outperformed human ‘computers’. Alan Turing, along with other scientists, endeavored on his Turing Machine, which eventually allowed the Allies to break the Axis code. If anything, this wartime pressure helped accelerate these innovations as nations needed faster and more reliable ways of processing information.
Early pioneers of this burgeoning field of computer science including John Von Neumann, Howard Aiken, and Grace Hopper, realized human logic could be mechanized, and that information could be represented using a binary language and thus, be controlled electronically. These first machines, predominantly for military application, would fill entire rooms, until the invention of the solid-state transistor in 1947. This allowed computers to become increasingly smaller, faster, and less expensive, so that in time, they began to see commercial use and eventually gave rise to personal computing in the 1980s. Another related initiative which also came from a military backing was the computerized network. Initially envisioned as a contingency plan in case of attack by foreign invaders, the DARPA and ARPANET served as the information-sharing basis of the modern Internet. As the Internet grew it became not only a means of sharing information, but also a method of global communication, commerce, entertainment, and social interaction. As advancements in computing technology allowed for increasingly smaller and thus more ubiquitous devices that are now a seemingly inescapable part of our everyday lives.
Whether or not society is better off with computers everywhere is a very complex question, and there are undoubtedly strong arguments to be made for either side of such an argument. Today’s computers are so ingrained into nearly every single aspect of our lives, much as with industrialization a few centuries before, it would be unthinkable for civilization to revert back to a pre-digital existence. Technology of today has ushered in an era of comfort and convenience, allowing us to more easily navigate our way around the globe via GPS, transforming how people communicate and experience the world through online-connectivity and social media, helping extend our lifespan with the multitude of advancements in the medical field, and perpetuating further scientific research and discovery. That is not to say there is no cost of this digital encroachment. Online privacy and cybercrime were not concerns of bygone civilizations. Computerized automation is eliminating jobs with frightening expediency. The Internet made it possible to spread unverified information, ramped up with the advent of social media, and even more so now with the capabilities of artificial intelligence. As those working on the Manhattan Project once feared the ramifications of their creation falling into the wrong hands, so too does the overall impact of technology depend on how socially- and ethically-responsible those who wield it, are capable of being.