Ask Hackaday: What Can Only A Computer Do?

It is easy to apply computers to improve things we already understand. For example, instead of a piano today, you might buy a synthesizer. It looks and works — sometimes — as a piano. But it can also do lots of other things like play horns, or accompany you with a rhythm track or record and playback your music. There’s plenty of examples of this: word processors instead of typewriters, MP3 players instead of tape decks, and PDF files instead of printed material. But what about something totally new? I was thinking of this while looking at Sonic Pi, a musical instrument you play by coding.

But back to the keyboard, the word processor, and the MP3 player. Those things aren’t so much revolutionary as they are evolutionary. Even something like digital photography isn’t all that revolutionary. Sure, most of us couldn’t do all the magic you can do in PhotoShop in a dark room, but some wizards could. Most of us couldn’t lay out a camera-ready brochure either, but people did it every day without the benefit of computers. So what are the things that we are using computers for that are totally new? What can you do with the help of a computer that you absolutely couldn’t without?

I’m not sure there is a crisp answer to this. It is more like a spectrum. Sonic Pi — you can see a video below — uses coding to create music, but it is still music. Maybe to be totally revolutionary it should be directly doing brain entrainment. Still, I think the idea of creating via programming in real time is a bigger leap and one that not everyone appreciates. For example, some people love OpenSCAD and some want to use a mouse to draw 3D models. Other people use FreeCAD and switch back and forth since FreeCAD can use OpenSCAD.

So it seems like most of what computers have done is made things faster or easier. You don’t need a Sears catalog anymore because you shop on a Web site. Even Sears has one. So does the couple next door who makes and sells custom baby blankets. When you order one, you don’t have to send a check in the mail and the small business owner doesn’t have to go to the post office. Everything can be done via connected computers.

But what are the things that are uniquely due to the computer? From what I understand, modern jet aircraft, for example, are only flyable because of computers. You could know how to handle the negative stability, but you’d never be able to make adjustments fast enough. This might be the key. After all, at the base level, computers don’t do anything magical. But they can do what they do faster than we could ever hope to do it. But given enough time you could do the math for, say, tomography or X-ray crystallography by hand. It was just be a lot of work.

Making music by coding probably qualifies as do most other coding tasks although there were player pianos and jacquard looms with no computers. Again, something like Sonic Pi that does it in real time is probably more the province of computers. Sure, I guess you could posit some kind of machine that isn’t a traditional computer accepting the code, but then you are really just reinventing the computer if you make that argument.

So the question is: what are things that you can only do with a computer? Seems easy until you start thinking about it. Of course, some things are infinitely more practical or made much better. Handmade 3D prints would suck. It was very expensive to create camera-ready copy, math tables, or 3D animation before computers, yet it was all done by someone. Where are the new frontiers enabled solely by computers?