In what now seems like the prehistoric times of computer history, the earth's postwar era, there was quite a wide-spread concern that computers would take over the world from man one day.

译文：

在这个像是计算机史前时代的时代，地球的战后时代，人们普遍担忧有一天计算机会取代人类控制世界。

Already today, less than forty years later, as computers are relieving us of more and more of the routine tasks in business and in our personal lives. We are faced with a less dramatic but also less foreseen problem.

译文：

或者不到五十年后，计算机将越来越多的减轻人们的工作事务和日常琐事。我们也将面对一个没有什么戏剧性和更不可预测的问题。

Obviously, there would be no point in investing in a computer if you had to check all its answers, but people should also rely on their own internal computers and check the machine when they have the feeling that something has gone wrong.

译文：

显然，如果你不得不检查计算机提供的所有答案的话，对它投资就没有任何意义了。但是当人们觉的计算机确实出了一些问题的时候，应该靠自己内部的“计算机”来检查机器。

For most people the sea was remote, and with the exception of early intercontinental travellers or others who earned a living from the sea, there was little reason to ask many questions about it, let alone to ask what lay beneath the surface.

译文：

除了一些洲际旅行者和以大海为生的人，对于大多数人来说，大海是遥远的，没有什么必要提出太多问题，更别说思考大海海底的东西了。

The first time that the question "What is at the bottom of the oceans?" had to be answered with any commercial consequence was when the laying of a telegraph cable from Europe to America was proposed.

译文：

当铺设一条从欧洲到美洲的海底电报光缆的时候，出于商业动机，人们次不得不回答这个问题“海底是什么东西”。

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