text: Many people argue nowadays that, with the advent of computer technology, our mental arithmetic is poor and we are becoming a nation of couch potatos. It is true in a way, the development of portable calculating machines (calculators) has meant that we no longer need to be able to work out sums in our heads, but at what cost? In many shops, the cashiers appear to be dumbfounded by the simplest of sums without the aid of their tills.
  		In many areas, the skill of human judgement has been replaced by faster, more accurate, computers. Many people have had their job positions taken over by computers. Filing cabinets are becoming a thing of the past with computer databases. But even such menial tasks as filing are good for us. They encourage organisational skills and tidiness.
  	When people talk about artificial intelligence (AI), you hear many funny tales from people who are convinced that the computers are coming alive and will eventually rule us. These are just the rantings of people who have nothing to do with computers and who do not realise that behind every computer is a programmer. Even `artificial intelligence' needs to be programmed. Human brains still work out how to build the computers, how to program them and, more importantly, how to control them.
  	As for making the human brain redundant computers can help to improve learning skills, they can teach, test and improve our linguistic skills. Reflexes are improved (and this has been scientifically proven) by playing computer games, the very same things that parents say turn their children into `zombies'. We can expand our imagination and convert our ideas into computer simulated models, enabling us to design buildings and road networks.
  	The computer revolution has not made our brains redundant, it has opened up areas of them we never knew existed!
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