Transcending the Machines in Our Midst , by Stephen L. Talbott . All rights reserved. You may freely redistribute this chapter in its entirety for noncommercial purposes.
Computers are tools of the past.
They are perfectly designed to aid our understanding precisely insofar as it is a past-understanding. For example, if we want to know when lunar eclipses will occur in the year 2053, there's no better tool for figuring it out than a computer. But wait a minute. 2053 isn't in the past. That's a prediction of the future.