WHAT COMPUTERS DON'T DO | 2007-01-08
A friend of mine once said, "The one thing nobody ever does during Rush Hour is rush."
It has occurred to me that the one thing nobody does with a computer today is compute. I found out not that long ago that there is a calculator built into about every computer, on which, if you want to, you can compute, i.e., add, subtract, multiply and divide.
Watching documentaries on whales, it occurred to me that those calculators are like the leg bones in a blue whale. This is the biggest animal that has ever lived on earth -- probably. It is as long as a football field. Buried down deep in the back of each blue whale is a set of legbones, about animal size, and so absurdly tiny in this titantic body. But it is a last tiny reminder of the fact that this was once a walking, furry land animal.
So our computer actually has a computer in it, which we use about as much as the blue whale walks around.