Strong Men and Strong Machines

I like these two quotes Nicholas Carr uses from Norbert Wiener.

First, an observation:

The machines will do what we ask them to do and not what we ought to ask them to do.

Second, a story:

Some years ago, a prominent American engineer bought an expensive player-piano. It became clear after a week or two that this purchase did not correspond to any particular interest in the music played by the piano. It corresponded rather to an overwhelming interest in the piano mechanism. For this gentleman, the player-piano was not a means of producing music, but a means of giving some inventor the chance of showing how skillful he was at overcoming certain difficulties in the production of music. This is an estimable attitude in a second-year high-school student. How estimable it is in one of those on whom the whole cultural future of the country depends, I leave to the reader.

This story’s relevance to technology I also leave as an exercise for the reader.