The role of the computer in humanistic scholarship

Abstract

Within the past dozen years or so, the computer has made itself felt in every aspect of our society. One hundred years ago, it was the Industrial Revolution which wrought profound changes in the economic and social fabric of the western world. Today there is an upheaval of comparable force and significance in the so-called Computer Revolution. Indeed, Isaac Auerbach has characterized the invention of the computer as being comparable to that of the steam engine in its effects upon mankind. He predicted that the computer and its application to information processing "will have a far greater constructive impact on mankind during the remainder of the 20th Century than any other technological development of the past two decades." 1 .