"By depending upon them so completely, we fall hostage to the machines of our creation; we maintain a constant reliance upon their accuracy and infallibility. I am aware of the admitted parallel to many science fiction stories where the scientists' machines take over the world. Those tales are, thankfully, the products of vivid imaginations. The technology does not yet exist to worry about a renegade computer. HAL-9000 series com- puters are still far in the future. As long as we, as humans, tell the computer to open the pod bay doors, the pod bay doors will open." Pierre elicited a respectful giggle from the stand- ing room only crowd, many of whom came solely to hear him speak. Rickfield doodled. "Yet, there is another viewpoint. It is few people, indeed, who can honestly claim to doubt the answer displayed on their calcu- lator. They have been with us for over 20 years and we instinc- tively trust in their reliability. We assume the computing machine to be flawless. In many ways, theoretically it is per- fect. But when man gets involved he fouls it up. Our fingers are too big for the digital key pad on our wristwatch-calculator- timer-TV. Since we can't approximate the answer, we have lost that skill, we can't guess, it becomes nearly impossible to know if we're getting the right answer. "We trust our computers. We believe it when our spreadsheet tells us that we will experience 50% annual growth for five years. We believe the automatic bank teller that tells us we are overdrawn. We don't question it. We trust the computer at the supermarket. As far as I know, only my mother adds up her gro- ceries by hand while still at the check-out counter." While the image sank in for his audience, Pierre picked up the glass of ice water in front of him and sipped enough to wet his whistle. The crowd ate him up. He was weaving a web, drawing a picture, and only the artist knew what the climax would be. "Excuse me." Pierre cleared his throat. "We as a people believe a computer printout is the closest thing to God on earth. Di- vinely accurate, piously error-free. Computerized bank state- ments, credit card reports, phone bills, our life is stored away in computer memories, and we trust that the information residing there is accurate. We want, we need to believe, that the ma- chines that switch the street lights, the ones that run the elevator, the one that tells us we have to go to traffic court, we want to believe that they are right. "Then on yet another hand, we all experience the frustration of the omnipresent complaint, 'I'm sorry the computer is down. Can you call back?'" Again the audience emotionally related to what Pierre was saying. They nodded at each other and in Pierre's direction to indicate concurrence.