A Husband's Challenge to Science

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune
September 9, 1961

   WE ARE IN for more and more electronics and might as well get ready for the eventual reign of the robot.  The computer already has invaded about every area save romance and we can't rest serene even here.  Sooner or later some scientist with nothing better to do will bring out a wonder machine that will tell George whether Gertrude is really his dream girl or would, as a wife, be a nightmare.

   But electronics has its place and I am not one to discount it, even though it seems a crying shame that the human brain, nourished by blood, can't think as fast as a metal one nourished by electricity.

   Because of the current passion for keeping records, government, industry and schools would be chin deep in paper work were it not for the help of these uncanny devices.  And file and payroll clerks,  bookkeepers and stenographers would be reduced to babbling irrationality.

   WE SERIOUS and philosophic thinkers have long since concluded that man has got himself so boxed in by the complications, contradictions and bustling efficiencies of progress that he must take aid where he can get it if he knows what's good for him.

   We're just as sure, however that there must be limits to what electronics can do.  It cannot be expected to supply solutions to everything.  On the residential domestic front, for instance, it would wash against an unyielding reef.

   In this field, of course, cursory gains have been made.  We recognize and approve the fruits of simpler science --vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, power can openers and stoves that cook dinner while milady is lousing up a small slam in spades.

   

LINC computer 1961

   BUT THE REAL core of the problem goes far deeper.  What man really needs to chase the bugs from under the roof is a device that will anticipate and reckon with feminine emotions and reactions, something that will eliminate the booby traps, the sins of omission and the consequent frosty silences which repeatedly shake matrimony to its foundations.

   Elimination of these would reduce divorce, stanch tears and keep the home fires--rather than the wife--burning.

   To be worth its price the household computer would have to keep a man alert to all the special days his wife holds dear, from wedding anniversaries to the anniversary of little Judy's first tooth.  It would have to  make him remember to mail the check to the gas company and the get-well card to Fran, to return the shoes for credit during his lunch hour and pick up the aspirin en route home.

   

   THUS IT would have to be pocket-size.  If not on his person at all times, papa would flub about as many assignments as he does now.  One of my associates suggests that a satchel-size job would serve, but I disagree.  Too often it would be left on the cloakroom shelf at the office and buzz all night to nobody's profit.

   But a pocket-size computer would pose an appalling problem in shrinkage.  Even today's small brain machine , I understand, dwarfs a grand piano.  Fitting one of these babies into the manse would confound an Einstein.  And the only possible place for it would be the spot the boss had reserved for the matching planters.

Steve grants Guthrie's wish

   SUCH A stay-at-home installation wouldn't be worth the cost.  It might tell you where to find your other  sock or help with the tax forms but it wouldn't be around to gig you awake when you were tooling homeward without Aunt Harriet, whom you'd promised to pick up at the station without fail.

   My challenge, then, to the electronics industry is a miniature husband-helper.  If science can score a break-through here it can break through anything.  But I rather hope it doesn't try.  Some jobs are too big to tackle.

Copyright 2013 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.