HRH The Duke of Kent’s Presidential Address
ITNOW · 1982
Abstract A little over six years ago you were kind enough to invite me to become your Patron. While it is certainly true that I had taken a reasonable layman’s interest in computers before that time - I well realise this had been benifits organised and distant. I rather fear in retrospect that it probably did not go much beyond a somewhat vague belief that, contrary to the Bishop’s view of sin, computers were a ‘good thing’. I have found, though, that there is nothing like patronage of an organisation for concentrating the mind and as a result over the last few years the subject has taken on for me a completely new significance to the point where it could well become an all-consuming interest! Nevertheless I am acutely conscious, on the frequent occasions when I come into contact with experts in this science, of how limited my own computer education is - so that it was with a strange mixture of excitement and alarm that I learned the Society were going to invite me to become President for their 25th Anniversary Year. It is therefore, let me tell you, a great moment for me to have assumed the office of President of The British Computer Society thus becoming at the same time both Patron and President - and to have done so moreover on what is obviously a red-letter day for the Society, the celebration of its Silver Jubilee. I am deeply conscious of the honour you have done me and can only approach with humility the not undaunting task of launching this special conference which itself is the key event in the Jubilee celebrations.