Computers

In the early 1970s, pocket calculators were rare and expensive luxuries in Britain. Ten years later they are widely used, even by children in school, and their price has dropped to only a few pounds. An even more remarkable development has been the home computer - a machine with capabilities unimagined by the public only a few years ago. By 1983, almost one million British households had a home computer - using a large variety of programs from budgeting and preparing income tax returns to highly sophisticated games. The BBC has sponsored the production of one such micro-computer, and has run a highly successful television series on 'computer literacy'.

These computers are the result of breakthroughs which have allowed scientists to cram circuits, that would once have filled rooms, into tiny slivers of silicon. Now the world is beginning to feel the impact.

Most major UK firms have large and powerful computers to control their finances; they are extensively used by the civil service and the military; and no self-respecting scientist would now dream of carrying out research without one.

However, society has found some less acceptable side effects. The world now has a thriving new criminal activity - computer fraud. Sometimes millions of pounds are illegally transferred from banks or firms by highly skilled thieves who have gained access to programs or databanks. Other people point out that computers can store so much information about an individual that civil liberties could be threatened by authorities who misuse this new information technology.

There are also fears that computers, linked to each other by special cables and lines, could so speed up business transactions between companies that office staff and managers would become largely unnecessary, causing a further rise in Britain's already high unemployment figures.

Brian Harrison: Britain observed. 1945 to the present day; Ernst Klett Verlag, Stuttgart, 1984, page 76