BRITISH TRADE-UNIONS

THE UNITED KINDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND

THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE TODAY

CREAT BRITAIN

General Outline

POPULATION, INDUSTRY AND TRADE

POLITICAL PARTIES

LOOK WHAT THOSE KNUCKLE-HEADS ARE DOING

(To be read after Lesson 18)

If you think of a world free of human error, a society that is regulated by the quiet clicking of a computer which makes no mistakes you will get disappointed.

Like us, the mechanical brains are showing signs of nervousness, in decisiveness. In taking human skills, the machines also have taken our human weaknesses.

An American engineer designed a computer with ears. It responded to carefully spoken numbers with a regulated "clack-click", but one day it became excited by a movie-camera spring that was being wound within its hearing, and went into a hysteria producing its clickety-clacks. It returned to normal state, but repeated the performance as soon as is again heard the spring being wound.

Several large computers have suffered nervous breakdowns that were not planned. It was a very human kind of breakdown suffered by a machine which worked too hard at an impossible job. All night long it clicked and clacked widely, and in the morning it was whirring angrily and gnashing its gear teeth in despair. Finally it stopped in a state of shock. It had bee

работа не полностью