But for concepts to be created requires differentiation and integration by an individual human mind. Information technologies which organize provide fertile ground for new concepts to be developed - and those concepts may be more general and powerful than ever before. Cartesian coordinate systems led to graphs, and to the rectangular work area of the spreadsheet, an organization of data and formulas. Two and three-dimensional graphs led to the concepts of trend and surface. Computer graphics takes the Cartesian grid and make it possible to visualize complex fractals, a concept which itself was integrated from a vast and temporally dispersed body of work.
Fractals make it possible to understand chaotic behavior - infinity within finite boundaries.
And our new understanding of chaos is allowing us to solve problems in medicine, weather prediction, and engineering systems. We are smarter, because we see more in a richer landscape of knowledge, and we see farther because the number of shoulders upon which we can stand is expanding at a phenomenal rate. We are, and have been, solving real world problems as a result, and only as a result, of these cognitive and communicative tools. The fundamental difference between computers and any previous machine is that the computer can become an unprecedented number and range of different machines with no more effort that the construction of a new program - an act of conceptualization. But a computer is not just a machine.