The luncheon speech: the computer as sorcerer's apprentice
The computer is the engine of this latest phase in the acceleration of the industrial revolution. The role of the computer cannot be measured in the simple terms of the number of computers at work in the American economy or even in the extraordinary variety of functions in which the computer has found work to do---from accounting routines to industrial process control to creative enterprise in mathematics itself. More significantly, computer technology gathers in and brings to intense focus the most diverse discoveries on the frontiers of knowledge---from investigation into the nature of matter to speculations at the foundation of knowledge. It is the agency through which the advance of human understanding now finds its way to the control of natural forces in time intervals that grow shorter year by year and month by month.