How has computer power impacted the lives of those who cannot afford technology?

[wolram]

I am a fan of computers and the advancement of computer power , computer power, (calculations per sec) has improved life for the privileged (any one that can afford technology) but how much has computer power improved the life of those that can not.

And how has computer power increased our knowledge of the universe?

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

You don't have to own a computer to benefit from it.

 

[wolram]

You don't have to own a computer to benefit from it.

I own a computer, and i learn stuff every day, but how doe's that help people that can not afford technology, how doe's the ability to do millions of calculations per second improve our knowledge of the universe?

 

[Danger]

Such things as modeling astronomical phenomena, potential drug actions, CAD/CAM development of new technologies...

 

[physics girl phd]

Maybe it's decreased their quality of life:

Sally is a cashier at a store, as such, she can count basic change out, but the rest of her job concerns none of the addition, subtraction, or multiplication that a cashier traditionally would have known. She only needs to know how to scan objects, not do basic math... then as a result of that and other society influences (the credit card, the TV, etc.), she loses her remaining math skills, can't do her own taxes (pay someone to do them or take free services), and can't balance her checkbook (in fact, she even wonders: what is a checkbook?).

As a result, Sally spirals into dept and eventually loses her home, her job, and become a number in the growing computer database on the unemployed. Hence, she and her kids become fodder for the computer models of the economists. why did the family finances fail? Oh... in addition to not knowing how to live within their means, Dad's in jail because he robbed the electronics store down the street from the grocery where Sally worked.

Joy. what a pretty picture.

Note however: Sally does know more about how our nation and planet seems to violate entropy and create economic disparity. Hopefully there's life elsewhere reaching a more homogenized state.

 

[Joskoplas]

Just let me finish working on this Terminator, and I'll answer your question.

 

[wolram]

Such things as modeling astronomical phenomena, potential drug actions, CAD/CAM development of new technologies...

Modeling but not making them real, how many models end up in the bin? AFAIK computers have not advanced past A Einstein.

 

[wolram]

physics girl phd, raises a good point, the one that holds the best algorithm will wield the power to the detriment of the mass.

 

[russ_watters]

CAD/CAM was a great example: you owe the design of every electronc or mechanical thing you own to it. You're also defining "computer" much too tightly. Every car has a pretty sophisticated computer on it, for example. Every CD player, dvd player, all tv broadcasts, etc. The food you eat was genetically engineered with the aid of computers.

There are very few people on Earth who'se lives have not been improved by comptuers.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

I own a computer, and i learn stuff every day, but how doe's that help people that can not afford technology, how doe's the ability to do millions of calculations per second improve our knowledge of the universe?

Does anyone benefit from the stuff you learn other than you?

 

[Joskoplas]

Does anyone benefit from the stuff you learn other than you?

Yes, because I didn't knock them over the head today to get gas money.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

Yes, because I didn't knock them over the head today to get gas money.

There you have it wolram, in a nutshell. Joskoplas takes time out from his busy day to look up sports scores on the internets, finds out that he won $20 in the office pool and some poor computer illiterate gas pump jocky saves money on aspirin. Benefit.

 

[wolram]

CAD/CAM was a great example: you owe the design of every electronc or mechanical thing you own to it. You're also defining "computer" much too tightly. Every car has a pretty sophisticated computer on it, for example. Every CD player, dvd player, all tv broadcasts, etc. The food you eat was genetically engineered with the aid of computers.

There are very few people on Earth who'se lives have not been improved by comptuers.

Cd players, cars, this is exactly what i mean, THESE THINGS ARE TECHNOLODGY things that not every one can afford.
As yet no one has given any evidence of how computer power has improved our understanding of the universe.

 

[Danger]

As yet no one has given any evidence of how computer power has improved our understanding of the universe.

I believe that I have. You seem to have misunderstood my meaning of the word 'modeling'. Supercomputers are routinely used to model (simulate) what goes on within stars and even entire galaxies. Models are also used to test theories directly related to the eventual realization of fusion reactors, supersonic aircraft, bioengineering, and dozens of other fields that couldn't possibly be done by any number of mathematicians using pencils and paper.

 

[wolram]

I believe that I have. You seem to have misunderstood my meaning of the word 'modeling'. Supercomputers are routinely used to model (simulate) what goes on within stars and even entire galaxies. Models are also used to test theories directly related to the eventual realization of fusion reactors, supersonic aircraft, bioengineering, and dozens of other fields that couldn't possibly be done by any number of mathematicians using pencils and paper.

No misunderstanding Danger, it seems that every one wants to blatantly over look
what i am saying.

1, how has computer power increased our knowledge of the universe.
2 How has computer power helped those that can not afford technology.

 

[mgb_phys]

1, how has computer power increased our knowledge of the universe.

Pretty much all observational astronomy relies on computer data crunching, stellar structure relies on hydrocodes and galaxy formation on N body models. I don't know ho wmuch fundamental particle physics releis on modelling but all the experimental stuff certainly does.

2 How has computer power helped those that can not afford technology.

The cost of doing business reductions allows ordinary people to have bank accounts and telephones - which 50years ago they couldn't simply because the cost of the paperwork to administer them was too high for poor customers to be profitable.
There are kids in India making a very nice living as programmers, next year it will be poor kids in china and the decade after africa.

 

[Proton Soup]

physics girl phd, raises a good point, the one that holds the best algorithm will wield the power to the detriment of the mass.

but at some point, an angry mob of torch-wielding villagers will attack your castle.

you'd better have self-replicating/maintaining machines by that point if you hope to carry on after killing them.

 

[wolram]

Pretty much all observational astronomy relies on computer data crunching, stellar structure relies on hydrocodes and galaxy formation on N body models. I don't know ho wmuch fundamental particle physics releis on modelling but all the experimental stuff certainly does.


(Please note the difference from understanding the problem , to understanding the whole)

.

The cost of doing business reductions allows ordinary people to have bank accounts and telephones - which 50years ago they couldn't simply because the cost of the paperwork to administer them was too high for poor customers to be profitable.
There are kids in India making a very nice living as programmers, next year it will be poor kids in china and the decade after africa.

Some kids in India ?

 

[mgb_phys]

Some kids in India ?

There has been a huge boom in IT jobs in India in the last 5-10years. India because it has good schools and they speak English,

It benefits everyone-
Indian gets a new rich middle class with well paid jobs
US companies get software developed for 1/4 the cost of paying american programmers
American students can avoid having to study nasty hard science subjects and become real estate agents and advertising executives instead.
And consultants making a killing fixing projects that are a disaster beause they were handed off to the cheapest offshore bidder with no proper management!

 

[Proton Soup]

in india, you can probably make a decent living off of no more than adsense and referrals. half the people spamming blogs don't seem to speak english, either.

 

[wolram]

There has been a huge boom in IT jobs in India in the last 5-10years. India beause it has good schools and they speak English,

It benefits everyone-
Indian gets a new rich middle class with well paid jobs
US companies get software developed for 1/4 the cost of paying american programmers
American students can avoid having to study nasty hard science subjects and become real estate dealers and advertising executives instead.
And onsultants making a killing fixing projects that are a disaster beause they were handed off to the cheapest offshore bidder with no proper management!

So now we descend to trivia? India is quite well off compared to some countries.

i do not intend to knock science, i have the ultimate respect for it, all i am asking is
(how has computer power increased our knowledge) re guarding the universe, and how has it bettered the life of the majority who can not afford technology.

 

[turbo]

Computers have allowed researchers access to large public databases. My collaborators and I are currently working on the second of what will be a series of papers on the properties of interacting galaxies. We chose galaxies of the M-51 type to restrict membership. I would view survey images from Nasa's IRSA database (B&W Schmidt telescope images in three bands), select candidates for inclusion by visual appearance, and email Ari (Finland) and Dave (New York) with my impressions, including how the pairs should be categorized. Ari would review the images and if he agreed, the pairs were categorized at that time, If there was disagreement or only conditional approval, we would hand the vetted list (via email) to Dave, who would act as an arbiter/tie-breaker. After the galaxy pairs were categorized, Ari would get their data (minor/major axes, position data, apparent recessional velocities, and MANY more) from Nasa's NED database and populate the spreadsheets with that data. It took us well over 2 years, and many thousands of potential candidates, many of them several times, plus one revision of the draft requested by the referees. The paper was submitted electronically, presented to subscribers through Springer's early electronic publishing system, and finally published in their print journal Astrophysics and Space Sciences. NONE of this would have been possible without computers and the Internet, the most important component of which was that the three of us found each other on-line with similar research interests. It can be argued (and rightfully so) that even a peer-reviewed paper on galaxy interactions adds little to our knowledge of the universe as a whole, but with a LOT of people nibbling around at the edges of mundane problems like this, we might achieve more than you'd expect.

 

[mgb_phys]

Sorry - I thought you were questioning that India had an IT industry,
The big change brought about by computers is the disconnection between raw materials and the job.
The first steel plants were on top of the coal and iron ore, the shipyards where these were near a river. This limited the jobs available - there aren't many shipbuilding jobs in Manitoba or many wheat farming jobs on the Clyde.

Computers allow the job to be wherever there are educated people - this makes the world a lot flatter which is going to have huge consequences for politics and economies. A bit larger than the effects of computer games.

It's not quite there yet but the big effect computers are going to have in the next decade is being able to model proteins. This will allow drugs to actually be designed rather than the current system of - try lots of compounds and see who gets better, it's worked for the last 4000years but it is time medicine became a science.

 

[LURCH]

Communication;
Most people in India now have cell-phones. A large part of that whole continent has simply skipped over the installment of telephone lines because cell-phones made them obsolete before they ever arrived. These cell-phones, and their networks, were modeled on, and are operated by, computers. Without the computers that operate them, this new method of communication would be impossible, and without the computers that modeled them, they would be so expensive that only the "privileged" could afford them.

Transportation;
Most people in the "3rd World" get around on mopeds. These mopeds are produced in factories that use computerized machinery and automated systems. Without these systems, mopeds would belong only to the privileged.

Likewise, if a person with a low income (from a global perspective) buys groceries to feed his familly, those groceries would be more expensive if not for the computers used in agriculture (for modelling crop-yields, controlling storage environments, predicting fertilizer/pesticide requirements, etc.). Conversely, if a person is so poor that he cannot buy groceries from a store, and must get by on subsistence farming, he probably uses metal tools to farm. These tools are made of refined metals that are forged with the aid of computer controlls without which their manufacture would make them prohibitively expensive, and the subsistence farmers of the world would have to fashion old-style, pre-Egyptian plows out of sharpened wooden sticks.

If AIDS prevention measures have had any effect in South Africa, if CARE packages arrive in the right place at the right time to prevent tens of thousands from starving to death in Ethiopia, if vaccination forestalls the suffereing and death of millions every year around the globe, computers have been beneficial to those people (most of whom will never own a computer).

But due to the constant and rapid advances in computer tech, many people who would never own a computer without these advances will. When I was in West Africa in the early '90s, we built a school and a small medicall fecility for a town that could not afford to sustain these institutions on their own. Among the school supplies were several old desktop computers. The children who attend this school will have access to the most advanced information in the world; the same information available to anyone, anywhere.

By US standards (even then), these machines were archaic. If you tried to give one to your teenage child here, they would wine about how slow it was. Why is that? It is because they were more than ten years old and, as a direct result of computer advancement being so rapid, they had become something the privileged no longer have use for. They were items to be thrown away, if some charitable organization hadn't been available to take them to the "less priveleged."

And that is the main benefit; as the cutting edge, state-of-the-art, gets more and more advanced, the things that are way out of reach for most people today will become attainable tomorrow, and universally possessed by even the poorest people, the day after tomorrow.

Wow, I went on a lot longer than I intended, there. But the list of benefits (for those who can't obtain the latest tech) is very long.

 

[misgfool]

And how has computer power increased our knowledge of the universe?

The computer tells me that somewhere in the universe there is an individual called wolram. Without the computer I probably would have not known this.

 

[wolram]

Thanks Lurch, Turbo.

Turbo, you explain study not knowledge, i say again or restate, how has computer power increased our knowledge since say A Einstein.
Lurch i have seen the crap machinery exported to India, and i say again India is quite well off,
India runs on cast offs and to a lesser extent computers, (call centers any one).

 

[Cyrus]

Maybe it's decreased their quality of life:

Sally is a cashier at a store, as such, she can count basic change out, but the rest of her job concerns none of the addition, subtraction, or multiplication that a cashier traditionally would have known. She only needs to know how to scan objects, not do basic math... then as a result of that and other society influences (the credit card, the TV, etc.), she loses her remaining math skills, can't do her own taxes (pay someone to do them or take free services), and can't balance her checkbook (in fact, she even wonders: what is a checkbook?).

I'm an engineer and I can't do basic math. I have a computer and matlab. There are better things to worry about than multiplication tables and adding/subtracting.

I don't do my own taxes. I don't think most people do either. Who balances a checkbook? I go online and it tells me.

As a result, Sally spirals into dept and eventually loses her home, her job, and become a number in the growing computer database on the unemployed. Hence, she and her kids become fodder for the computer models of the economists. why did the family finances fail? Oh... in addition to not knowing how to live within their means, Dad's in jail because he robbed the electronics store down the street from the grocery where Sally worked.

Joy. what a pretty picture.

Note however: Sally does know more about how our nation and planet seems to violate entropy and create economic disparity. Hopefully there's life elsewhere reaching a more homogenized state.

I think this is a silly generalization.

 

[LURCH]

Lurch i have seen the crap machinery exported to India, and i say again India is quite well off,
India runs on cast offs and to a lesser extent computers, (call centers any one).

But they wouldn't be if there were no cast-offs. And besides, I was mostly talking about West Africa and Ethiopia and Somalia and such places.

I also see that like ten people posted while I was typing. Man, I'm slow without my Dragon!

 

[OAQfirst]

Without the Internet, I wouldn't know even a single percent of everything I do now about developing nations and their situations. So, while this technology hasn't necessarily touched many of them directly, it at least broadens the knowledge of others, like me, so I may act in whatever capacity I pursue. At the minimum, my education may benefit them by helping me make more informed decisions at the voting booth.

Most importantly, I get to communicate with people around the world directly, such as at this very site. The old pen pal through snail mail would never have gotten me this far.

 

[wolram]

Without the Internet, I wouldn't know even a single percent of everything I do now about developing nations and their situations. So, while this technology hasn't necessarily touched many of them directly, it at least broadens the knowledge of others, like me, so I may act in whatever capacity I pursue. At the minimum, my education may benefit them by helping me make more informed decisions at the voting booth.

Most importantly, I get to communicate with people around the world directly, such as at this very site. The old pen pal through snail mail would never have gotten me this far.

The Internet is a glorified telephone, it is the number crunchers i am talking about, and no one wants to really address, if computer power increased over night by 100 fold how would it help our knowledge of the universe, and the people that can not afford technology?

 

[Danger]

I hate to say this, Woolie, but it seems to me that you've already made up your mind and are unwilling to acknowledge legitimate answers.

 

[OAQfirst]

The Internet is a glorified telephone, it is the number crunchers i am talking about, and no one wants to really address, if computer power increased over night by 100 fold how would it help our knowledge of the universe, and the people that can not afford technology?

Did a PC dump you recently?

 

[wolram]

I hate to say this, Woolie, but it seems to me that you've already made up your mind and are unwilling to acknowledge legitimate answers.

In a way i have, i think that no matter how powerful a computer is, it will all ways depend on input from a human, and a human to interprate the results.

So far AFAIK no one has bested Einstien with or without computers, what doe's that say?
Computers are just a tool is what it says, no matter how many numbers they can crunch per second.

It all so says computers will never eliminate poverty, and coputer (power) will all ways be a tool of the few.

 

[Danger]

Of course they're tools; nobody has ever disputed that. They are tools, however, that allow us to research and construct things that have never been possible before. As a man who makes his living with tools, I'm sure you would agree that spanners and micrometers make you far more productive than you could be with your bare hands.

 

[turbo]

Thanks Lurch, Turbo.

Turbo, you explain study not knowledge, i say again or restate, how has computer power increased our knowledge since say A Einstein.

Knowledge cannot be expanded without observation, study, and interpretation of results. You may argue that we have not had a remarkable resurgence in knowledge in cosmology, and I would agree with you. Still, advances cannot be made without a LOT of sweat, and cautious interpretation of the information gleaned.

Computers are tools. Think of a carpenter. Today's carpenters have table-saws, routers, edgers, planers, etc. Still, the prettiest furniture that I have ever seen has been hand-made. I bought my wife a chair for Christmas about 10 years ago. It is a very light dressing-table chair with a woven cane seat. The chair is made of tiger maple and features saber legs, beautifully-proportioned leg braces and an intricately-carved back splat with deep-relief scroll-work and a central decoration in the form of a conifer cone or perhaps a stylized pineapple. That chair is at least 150 years old and has never seen a power tool. The man who designed and built that chair had vision, artistic sense, and skill. Power tools can never confer those.

There are some very smart people with some very good ideas trying to expand our knowledge of the universe. Whether or not their use of computers can help their progress... well, there is a lot of grunt work to be done to explore and validate/refute their ideas, and using computers wisely to exploit their strengths as tools can help speed things up.

 

[wolram]

Knowledge cannot be expanded without observation, study, and interpretation of results. You may argue that we have not had a remarkable resurgence in knowledge in cosmology, and I would agree with you. Still, advances cannot be made without a LOT of sweat, and cautious interpretation of the information gleaned.

Computers are tools. Think of a carpenter. Today's carpenters have table-saws, routers, edgers, planers, etc. Still, the prettiest furniture that I have ever seen has been hand-made. I bought my wife a chair for Christmas about 10 years ago. It is a very light dressing-table chair with a woven cane seat. The chair is made of tiger maple and features saber legs, beautifully-proportioned leg braces and an intricately-carved back splat with deep-relief scroll-work and a central decoration in the form of a conifer cone or perhaps a stylized pineapple. That chair is at least 150 years old and has never seen a power tool. The man who designed and built that chair had vision, artistic sense, and skill. Power tools can never confer those.

There are some very smart people with some very good ideas trying to expand our knowledge of the universe. Whether or not their use of computers can help their progress... well, there is a lot of grunt work to be done to explore and validate/refute their ideas, and using computers wisely to exploit their strengths as tools can help speed things up.

I am in total agreement with you Turbo, computers will speed things up, if they are asked the right questions ,and the results agree with observations.

 

[Pythagorean]

I am in total agreement with you Turbo, computers will speed things up, if they are asked the right questions ,and the results agree with observations.

Some problems don't have analytical solutions. We could do the numerical solutions ourselves, sure, but we'd be about 20 years behind where we are now.

For instance, Quantum Mechanics applied to the hydrogen atom is analytical, and you can kind of fudge some numbers to make the solution to helium usable, but any atom higher than that requires long, tedious, numerical solutions.

Because of the computational work in QM, chemistry has a lot more to talk about now. I don't know how far along our genetics studies would be without them either, but I suspect not very far at all. This has helped us understand medical sciences and create better medical technologies. (I'm guessing we wouldn't have a very useful MRI without computational sciences). So in the respect of medicine, it definitely helps the poor.

 

[wolram]

Some problems don't have analytical solutions. We could do the numerical solutions ourselves, sure, but we'd be about 20 years behind where we are now.

For instance, Quantum Mechanics applied to the hydrogen atom is analytical, and you can kind of fudge some numbers to make the solution to helium usable, but any atom higher than that requires long, tedious, numerical solutions.

Because of the computational work in QM, chemistry has a lot more to talk about now. I don't know how far along our genetics studies would be without them either, but I suspect not very far at all. This has helped us understand medical sciences and create better medical technologies. (I'm guessing we wouldn't have a very useful MRI without computational sciences). So in the respect of medicine, it definitely helps the poor.

Pythagorean, i have no quibble with the middle, it is the top and bottom i am questioning.

 

[russ_watters]

No misunderstanding Danger, it seems that every one wants to blatantly over look
what i am saying.

No, you're just blatantly ignoring what people are saying.

1, how has computer power increased our knowledge of the universe.

If you literally mean the universe (as opposed to the laws of the unvierse), then the Hubble is a great example of a telescope that depends on computers to function and has revolutionized our understanding of the universe.

2 How has computer power helped those that can not afford technology.

Ok, so if CD players, tvs, and cars are out, then you're basically asking about people who live in 3rd world countries only since almost everyone in 1st world countries has a cd player, tv, or car.

In that case, there is no direct benefit for a peasant farmer in rural China. That's basically by definition, since "direct" benefit means they have to own a computer. But the global poverty rate has dropped by 50% in the past 20 years, so anyone who has benefited from that (ie, most of the population of the world, including those in rural China) have benefitted from computers.

 

[Pythagorean]

Pythagorean, i have no quibble with the middle, it is the top and bottom i am questioning.

I assure you, if we could find an analytical solution, we'd much rather prefer that! Computation is what we found, it's the only thing that we have that could solve our problems in a reasonable amount of time. Perhaps there's another way, sure, but we haven't found it yet (and trust me, people are STILL looking. This is not a dead subject!)

These numerical solutions (the computation itself) are doable by humans, and algorithms can even be made to make them quicker, but we're literally talking about hundreds of thousands of pieces of paper and hundreds of pencils. You also have to consider all the errors we make with pencil and paper (even the most established science/math pros still make mistakes)

At this rate, one physicist could work on one problem his whole life and only partially solve it. With computers, a physicist can pump through hundreds (if not thousands) of problems. The effective outcome is such a dramatic improvement, I don't see how you could ignore the impact of that on sciences, and all the helpful applications of science.

I will give you this: When it comes to giant models that try to make predictions about huge, complex systems (like the weather), there's an obvious failure rate there. When it comes to something like QM (where you model a single atom), the results have been used and applied and are making the world a better (err.. more comfortable?) place as we speak, without a doubt.

 

[Danger]

But the global poverty rate has dropped by 50% in the past 20 years, so anyone who has benefited from that (ie, most of the population of the world, including those in rural China) have benefitted from computers.

True. Even without increasing incomes or status, the distribution of emergency supplies to 3rd world countries relies upon computers ranging from aircraft electronics to sustainability studies and routing plans. There are an awful lot of people alive today who wouldn't be without them.

 

[glondor]

Sounds like you are looking for A.I. Wolram. Real human scale A.I. does not exist yet. It may not ever. When a computer can think, we may be blessed or cursed.

 

[russ_watters]

So far AFAIK no one has bested Einstien with or without computers, what doe's that say?

You are so wrong and so ignoring everything that everyone is saying. What Einstein knew about the universe is nothing compared to what we know now: Every physicist on this site knows more about the universe than Einstein did! E=MC^2 might have been part of the basis of nuclear weapons and power, but Einstein had nowhere close to the knowledge or understanding necessary to build a nuclear plant or weapon. You're wrong, plain and simple.

Computers are just a tool is what it says, no matter how many numbers they can crunch per second.

No one has suggested that computers are anything more than a tool: you didn't ask that, you asked how they help people. And the obvious answer is that they help by being a tool!

It all so says computers will never eliminate poverty, and coputer (power) will all ways be a tool of the few.

Also very, very wrong, as I already said. Poverty has dropped by half in the last 20 years, mostly due to the economic improvements pushed by technology: ie, the computer revolution.

 

[Gokul43201]

As yet no one has given any evidence of how computer power has improved our understanding of the universe.

Are you being serious with this question?

Take a trip to the nearest university, get to the physics department, and walk into any lab/office, sit down for a while and watch what happens there over the course of a single day (without getting thrown out).

 

[Gokul43201]

The peasant farmer in rural China benefited from the National and Provincial government offices being outfitted with computers which were used in the design and implementation of countless number of infrastructure development projects that provide the farmer with a water supply, electricity and access to roadways.

 

[turbo]

I should note here that I wrote custom application software for legal practices, real estate agencies, manufacturers, big trucking companies, etc, when there was no flexible off-the-shelf programs available to address their needs (think '87-'89 time-frame), and even though I helped them do more with fewer people, they could not let go of the paper-file legacy, so they probably generated, collated, and filed more paper reports after my intervention than before. Still, allowing a trucking company to chart its receivables by age helped them to make their case for expanding their line of credit at a bank. Writing a program to allow a trucking company to optimize fueling (making drivers fuel in states that apportioned fuel taxes and rebated taxes for miles not driven in those states) saved the trucking companies mucho dinero. Writing a point-of-sale program for a large manufacturer of wood-harvesting equipment was a challenge. The owner wanted instant access (by part OEM number or substitute alias) to every item in his inventory, including how many were on hand, what he had paid for them, and when he should re-order. I also gave him the ability to switch between first-in-last-out and first-in-first-out inventory accounting, with a STRONG program-enforced caveat that he could not implement this change without the prior approval of his accountant, lest the IRS fine him. I also flowed all internal parts sales (for manufacturing and repair in his shop) and all retail counter-sales directly to the receivables of his accounting program, which I had also heavily modified.

None of this stuff fed starving little children in 3rd-world countries, but it sure helped regional businesses not only survive, but thrive. The computer is only a tool, but in the right hands, it can do a lot. My "powerful" home PC at the time was an IBM Model 50 PS2 with a 286 processor, one meg of Ram and a 20 meg HD. I brought entire application programs (usually compiled) to my clients on a floppy disk. Things have changed in 20 years, but the leverage that properly-used computation can bring to a business has not.

 

[Pythagorean]

I thought of another non-computational benefit of computers:
data storage itself has been very helpful in record keeping.

 

[Danger]

Out of the mouths of babes...
Pythagorean, that is probably the most important aspect of the entire argument. Congrats for being the first to think of it.
I used to have to drive for 1/2 hour to get to a decent library, and now I can get just about any info that I need (given proper scrutinization) in a matter of seconds.

 

[turbo]

I thought of another non-computational benefit of computers:
data storage itself has been very helpful in record keeping.

This point alone has been a bone of contention for over 20 years. When the storage of public records was predicated on paper records, certified copies, etc, the digital records were viewed as redundant, like wearing both a belt and suspenders. I spent many, many hours with business-owners and managers trying to convince them that if they adopted robust data-backup procedures they could eliminate a lot of printing, filing, etc. That was REAL tough. One place (a dental practice) had done this willingly for another data-service company, but when they wanted a server upgrade and I showed up to perform that, I got curious about their tape back-up system. The office manager (practice-owner's wife) had dutifully kept and rotated backup tapes every day for years. I tried to read and verify any data off those tapes only to find out that they had been using a poorly-coded program that generated an error every time they tried to make a backup, failed to make a backup, and spit out an empty tape every night. Colorado made some pretty good tape drives and put out some decent software, but fly-by-night jerks preyed on small businesses and left them exposed.

The receivables of a medical practice form the basis for their credit-line with local lenders, and that dental practice was operating with a gun to its head for several years - with no clue. Jerry (the owner of the practice) got me a LOT of business. He got to talk to lots of other business-owners when all they could do was open and (periodically) spit.

 

[Pythagorean]

Adding to what turbo said, think of all the costs that are saved with the help of data storage and how the savings can be distributed to the customer (poor and rich alike). Of course, there's no guarantee that every company will do this, but thanks to competition, I think most do.

There's yet another example of how it helps the poor.