Wow... I'm really surprised the preeks have let that stand untouched. (Did MossRubbit add that? Hmm... That one bit makes it sound like Jehane Butler was a Frank Herbert creation; there's no evidence in the books for it. That's pure McNelly from the
DE.)
I tend to take a more Confucian view: aim for the Middle Way. Extremes of any sort are generally bad and to be avoided. Moderation is the key. Overreactions are a sign of weakness: we cannot control ourselves so let's destroy all hint of the temptation.
Sure, I
could do my personal finances by hand, recording them in an actual ledger instead of a Numbers spreadsheet, but what would be the point? Would devoting the necessary time and effort to doing so make me a better person? I don't really see how.
Calculators were just being accepted in the math classrooms when I was in high school in the late 70s, but we still had to learn how to calculate square roots and the trig functions, etc., without one. (I'm 100% sure I've forgotten most of it, but I knew how to do it all at one time, so all I'd have to do is look it up. I've still got the books.
![Wink ;)](./images/smilies/icon/wink.gif)
) I found my dad's old slide rule up in a closet around that time and tried to learn how to use it, but the calculator was faster and the cool factor too low.
![Wink ;)](./images/smilies/icon/wink.gif)
(Kinda like how I tried to learn to use a Japanese soroban abacus when I first came over here. Again, interesting but not enough so to justify its use on a daily basis.)
The basic role of the computer as a tool will necessarily change once we create (or evolve?) an actual machine-hosted sentience. The trick will be to retain our autonomy and not let the machines do our thinking for us. The inhabitants of the Duniverse failed in some way to establish a viable form of coexistence with their machines. Let's hope we're luckier.
(FH really gives us so little information. But even those hints are enough to know he wouldn't have gone for any cheap pulp Skynet/Terminator/Jan-in-the-pan nonsense.)