Time to let your imagination soar

Press, 24 April 1984, Page 29

Time to let your imagination soar

From writing music to storing taxation details, computers can be used for a wide variety of things. MARY MATTHEW, with the help of cartoonist RITA PARKINSON, continues our computer awareness series.

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So far in this series we have looked at the history of computers, the parts of a computer, computer languages, writing with a computer, and computers in education.

Today we will take a quick look at what people use computers for.

This is the main stuff of the news about computers, so keep reading the computer pages after our series ends in a few weeks.

Computers are not just the machines we see with keyboards and screens, staring like cyclops out of advertisements.

They are also in washing machines, traffic lights and communication satellites. It is almost more difficult to say what you CAN’T do with a computer than what you CAN.

Here is a list of some of the varied uses of computers in society today.

Read it slowly, with your imagination activated. “There’s no way computer graphics can compete with the rich pictures your own mind can conjure up from a text description,” to quote Rex Mclntosh, TVNZ’s graphics whiz, talking about adventure games. And remember, it is all happening NOW: SPACE TRAVEL Design of space vehicles.

Flight planning. Flight control. Data feedback from space. BANKING Cheque handling. Updating customers’ accounts. Printing customer’s statements. Calculating interest. “Money in the wall.” TRAFFIC CONTROL Traffic lights.

METEOROLOGY Computer mapping. Satellite weather observation. Weather forecasts. MEDICINE Patients’ record. Hospital administration. Patients’ monitoring and scanning. Diagnosis. Research. PRINTING Typesetting. POLICE Records of offenders. Descriptions of wanted or missing persons. Stolen property. Traffic offences. Vehicle ownership. Fingerprint records. AIR TRAVEL Timetabling. Reservations. On-board navigation. Black box flight recorder. Air-traffic control. Load distribution. ENERGY Hydro-electric power generation control (e.g. Whakamaru, peak load supply/ control) INLAND REVENUE I.R.D. numbers. Information storage. OFFICES Word processors. Accounting machines. Data files. SHOPS Point-of-sale terminals. Bar codes. Kimball tags (especially for clothing). Stock control. LIBRARIES Cataloguing Issuing books HOMES Washing machines. Cookers. Sewing machines. Home computers. TELECOMMUNICATIONS Satellite transmission. Automatic telephones (STD). Answerphone service. Communication between computers. Telex (an international network of teleprinter subscribers). Teletext. Videotex (Viewdata). You can all think of more. The last two in the list, teletext and videotex, are so new that most people are not quite sure what they are, so here is a bit of information about them. They combine computer and television set to change an entertainment medium into the latest information technology. Both show pages of information and are supported by advertising. Videotex is a simplified version of on-line computer time-sharing. It uses a telephone line or a two-way cable to connect home TV

sets to a central computer. Videotex is therefore interactive; you use a small keyboard in order to bank, shop, play games and do research, and for news, stock prices and electronic mail. New Zealand farmers are interested in Canada’s “Grassroots” videotex network. It has been a commercial success since September, 1980, and now has over 1000 users in Manitoba. It has a 20,000-page database, including the latest quotes from the Toronto Stock Exchange and accurate weather forecasts from World Weather Watch. Canadian farmers even get weather reports for the wheat-growing areas of the Soviet Union and Argentina, so they know how their competition is getting on. Teletext is a one-way broadcast of text and graphics to TV sets, and is available to anyone who buys a decoder. New Zealand has just started using it, and it has already proved particularly helpful to deaf people. Teletext can supply some of the same information as videotex. Although it cannot do as much, it is cheaper than videotex and likely to be more widely available.

in which you “choose your own adventures.” They do not usually have graphics. One fantasy quest computer game that does have graphics is “Dragon’s Eye." It was written by Robert Leyland when he was working for the Auckland firm of Southern Software in 1981. More than 30,000 copies of the game have been sold internationally. Writing music Serious programs are becoming more like games every day. Take the latest program for writing music on a home computer, for example. It was written by a Californian teenager, Will Harvey. Will, by the way. is not just a hacker. According to ”K-Power,” Scholastic Inc.’s new “magazine for the computer generation,” he plays football and was president of his high school student body last year. “Music Construction Set” is his fourth commercial success. It gets full-page advertisements in computing magazines as “The End of Dinkety Dink.” It works with the “friendliness” of Apple Lisa (or Macintosh) graphics; a little hand picks up a note, and puts it where you want it on the treble or bass stave. You use a joystick to move the hand, which also puts in clefs, key signatures, rests, sharps and flats. Point to the little piano in the lower right, and you will hear your music played back. You can vary speed, sound quality and volume. For “cut-and-paste” editing you will find scissors and paste pot right there on the screen. An inexpensive music “enhancer” lets you play chords of up to six notes each with an Apple; the Commodore version plays chords of up to three notes each without any extra gear. You can print the music with a graphics printer. Bill Budge, enfant terrible of computer games, used a similar technique for his “Pinball Construction Set.” Music Construction Set is for people who already know how to write music. It will not teach you music. There are other programs for that. Soon they will include video clips to show how Jimi Hendrix or the Beatles did it. Fine escapist stuff, or essential in the new leisure age? Much of it is good, but we need to be aware of the effects that computers can have on people, and some of the dangers of computerisation.

Problem-solving Computers can be used to solve a variety of problems through simulation and modelling. A book used in many schools, the “Usborne Guide to Computers,” has pictures of computer models on page 26. There is the computer model of how a queue builds up in a canteen: it can work out how fast everything should be done so that there are no delays, and food does not get cold. There is the ship’s bridge simulator which helps people learn to navigate large “supertankers.” There is a frog dissection simulator. Using a light sensitive pen, you can “dissect” a picture of a frog without having to cut up a real one (good news for Kermit). Teachers use simulation programs such as Pollute, Engine, Lemonade Stand and Mid-Canterbury Farming Game with their classes. Games All computer games are simulations of some sort, whether they are simulating an alien attack on missile bases, frogs dodging crocodiles, or a hand of poker. Some of the most intriguing simulations are games