Unconventional systems
Daniel L. Slotnick · 1967
For the bulk of the past decade, the computer manufacturer has maintained the "party line" that their successive models of high-end machines possessed all the performance that would be required for the foreseeable future. (This "party line" alternated with abortive attempts to, in fact, build high performance, compatible extensions of the product line which turned out to be neither high performance nor compatible.) While it appears to be true that currently available equipment will for a while continue to be adequate to permit plumbing supply houses to do inventory control, it has always been outrageously false that this equipment come evens close to meeting our scientific or military needs. In these areas, we have witnessed the oft noted paradox of technological advances spurring scientific needs in such a fashion that the disparity between what is needed and what is available continues to grow. In the case at hand, this is no paradox at all in that it is only now that we can realistically envision computers of sufficient speed and capability to make it possible to start using them to solve problems with a nontrivial intellectual content.