While looking for some sources to help motivate the study of computer programming to very young undergraduate students, I ended up reading the preface to Volume 1 of Knuth's _The Art of Computer Programming_ -- in an electronic copy of the Second Printing from 1969 -- and stumbled on two very interesting consecutive paragraphs.

Here is the first:

> To a layman, the electronic computer has come to symbolize the importance of mathematics in today's world, yet few professional mathematicians are now closely acquainted with the machines. One reason for this surprising (and unfortunate) situation is that computers seem to have made some things "too easy," in the sense that people who no longer have to do so many things with pencil and paper never discover the mathematical simplifications which would aid the work. Some mathematicians occasionally resent the intrusion of computers, not because they are afraid they will lose their jobs to automation, but because they fear there will perhaps be less necessity to give birth to invention. On the other hand, there are obvious relations between computers and mathematics in the fields of numerical analysis, number theory, and statistics.

And here is the second: [in next post...]

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