title: The New Renaissance: Computers and the Next Level of Civilization
author:  Douglas S. Robertson 
description: Douglas Robertson knows perfectly well that trying to predict the future is difficult enough at any time. In a period of extreme technological change, with great social change fast on its heels, accurate prediction is a dice toss at best. But that doesn't stop him from trying to convey the scope of changes coming.
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  ![Cover](images/cover.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Making Money
  
  
    
  
  
  ### Terry Pratchett
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Terry Pratchett
  
  
  ## Making Money
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Author's Note
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Hemlines as a measure of national crisis (p.64): The author will be forever
  grateful to the renowned military historian and strategist Sir Basil Liddell
  Hart for imparting this interesting observation to him in 1968. It may explain
  why the mini-skirt has, since the sixties, never really gone out of style.
  
  
  Students of the history of computing will recognize in the Glooper a distant
  echo of the Phillips Economic Computer, built in 1949 by engineer-turned-
  economist Bill Phillips, which also made an impressive hydraulic model of the
  national economy. No Igors were involved, apparently. One of the early
  machines can be found in the Science Museum, London, and a dozen or so others
  are on display around the world for the interested observer.
  
  
  And finally, as ever, the author is grateful to t