The most amazing thing about computers

What is the most amazing thing about computers? There can be many answers like getting to play games, watch movies, play music, read emails, do word-processing, crunch numbers, do predictions, book tickets, research for assignments, find information, store data etc. given by different people finding uses of computers in different domains.

But if you go to see the fundamental nature of computers: What is the one thing which makes it different from us? Or in short, what is the one thing, which makes it so amazing!

It is the ability of computers to do "manual labour". As a programmer, have you ever wondered, when you do recursion/looping, the computer executes the same statement thousands of times without ever complaining about it. That is what makes it different from us.

We will complain if we are asked to do the same things even thrice. Why? Because we are so damn intelligent, we learn from the stuff we do, and get bored when there is nothing left to learn in it. This is one of the reasons why, in any factory, the highest number of leaves are taken by the employees in the assembly department. Another thing that proves this point is the saying: "Practice makes a man perfect". Yes, we are a self-learning computer, we learn when we repeat stuff, and we get bored from it when there is nothing substantial left in it to learn.

On the other hand, a computer never gets tired, never learns anything and does the same task again and again with a reliability often lost in a self-learning system like ours. It is said that: "To err is human". Why? Because, we experiment. Most of us, have experimented thinking about other things, while doing manual work like shaving, cooking food etc and have experienced cuts and burnt hands while doing this.

Thus, essential by-products of a self-learning and adaptive system like a human brain are unreliability and non-predictiveness which are borne out of a constant need to experiment. Thus, while we consider ourselves superior and possessors of intelligence, we could never have done what computers have done. They are the exact opposite of us. They never experiment and never learn anything from what they have done in the past. That is why, any computer system is reliable and predictive (except for the unfound bugs due to human-errors in software). That is one of the most amazing thing about a computer system, which can never be matched by any human brain.

I would love to hear more comments on this philosophy. Also I won't be writing any more posts for another 7 days, due to up-coming mid-semester examinations.