The computer is the most important invention in human history but most of us are not aware of that yet, according to a University of Colorado at Boulder professor.
That's because its impact today is beyond comprehension, just as the full impact of the printing press could not be perceived by observers in the 15th century, said Douglas Robertson, an adjunct professor of geological sciences.
The computer will produce even greater changes than the printing press, he contends.
Computers have brought tremendous advances in science and mathematics, influencing every field of study, said Robertson. New discoveries are routinely made today that were impossible before the computer age because computers allow us to "see" things that could not be seen before.
"The computer is more important to astronomy than the telescope," Robertson writes in "Phase Change: The Computer Revolution in Science and Mathematics," published this month by Oxford University Press. "It is more important to biology than the microscope. It is more important to high-energy physics than the particle accelerator. It is more important to mathematics than Newton's invention of calculus."
Most of the book defends these statements with numerous examples, which he said can be found in almost every issue of any major scientific journal.
Robertson also is a fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, or CIRES, and a member of CU-Boulder's Colorado Center for Chaos and Complexity. CIRES is a joint program of CU-Boulder and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
"Phase Change" is his second book about the computer revolution.
"I think everybody underestimates the importance of the computer -- including me," he said. "Nobody knows enough today to really comprehend its impact."
"The computer is of surpassing importance because handling information is the principal thing that distinguishes the human race," he said. "We don't run faster than other organisms, and we don't have sharper teeth or a thicker hide, but we do collect, process and exchange information more effectively and in larger quantities than any other organism that has ever lived."
Robertson argues that the computer is causing the fourth great explosion of information in history, following the invention of language, writing and printing.
These four information explosions have driven some of the most important changes in history, he said. The invention of language marked the beginning of the human race itself, the invention of writing marked the beginning of classical civilization and the invention of printing marked the beginning of modern civilization.
The computer is by far the largest step in this sequence -- bigger than the other three steps combined, he believes.
To understand the impact of an information explosion, he suggests examining the effects of the printing press on the civilizations of Europe and the Middle East.
In the early 15th century, the civilizations of Europe and the Middle East were quite similar in many ways, notes Robertson. But while printing exploded across Western Europe in the second half of that century, it was outlawed by the ruling powers in the Middle East for centuries and faced a number of additional hurdles including the difficulty of printing Arabic script with moveable type.
The deluge of information that followed the printing press in Europe was the primary factor leading to the Renaissance and the development of modern democracy in Europe, Robertson contends. Without the printing press, civilization in the Middle East remained largely unchanged for the next five centuries.
An even greater change will result from the computer, he said.
"We are poised on the brink of the greatest revolutions ever seen in the history of science and mathematics," he writes. "It is no great stretch to think that the future generations will regard the computer revolution as the very beginning of both science and mathematics, or, certainly, very much closer to the beginning than to the end."