Piotr Cieśliński Komputer i...Stanisław Lem

Piotr Cieśliński: Do you need the computer? Stanisław Lem: Personally I can’t use it, But I have my secretary for whom I bought the computer this year. Not because I like it, but because life forced me to do it. I had to use the computer because I have lost orientation and I didn’t know what is happening with my books all over the world (there is more than a thousand of them). I bought the computer with two years warrantywarrantywarranty. It broke down after five days. It was necessary to change something inside it but since then, it works rather fine. I use the computer only for work. When I write private letters I do it on my typewriter. I do not have time for playing games. Of course, I could write on the computer keyboard just like I write on my typewriter, but this is just a little different and I m used to my typewriter. The first typewriter I got from my dad when I was 12, today I have three typewriters at home. Now I am 75 and it is a bit difficult for me to swap them for the computer. Anyway, the pace of work depends on me not on the machine. In ancient Greece, the slaves wrote things down by carving them on tablets and that slowed the work down. But the words said by Plato are still valid and they do not depend on the technique he used for writing. We can imagine that the computer may be helpful for an engineer or a designer, they can use it for simulations etc. My late friend, a well‑known Polish mathematician Stanisław Ulam, introduced the rule of active co‑operation with the computer. But I deal with language. In this field, the computer may have the Polish‑English dictionary and it may indicate the grammatical error (however, I think that I know the Polish language quite well). The computer does not have anything to offer on the higher levels of the intellectual capacitycapacitycapacity. I consciously refused both the modem and the Internet connection, even if they were offered me for free. For fast communication, I use the fax machine and in five minutes I can send the answer to the producer from the USA.

lem Source: Piotr Cieśliński, Komputer i...Stanisław Lem, „Biuro i komputer” 1996, t. 299, s. 1.