There are so many entertainment and leisure activities that support computer use that these applications are virtually impossible to enumerate. So let’s consider a few selected applications of general interest- sports, movies and television, music, and art.
Sports :
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Among the earliest applications of computers in sports were highly simplified computerized baseball games.
You selected opposing lineups and then issued a RUN command at your terminal. Subsequently the computer would use random numbers to simulate a ballgame and, within seconds, print out a box score.
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Not very interesting, perhaps, but better things were to come. Today there are some very sophisticated products that enable you to “participate” in sports such as baseball, football, auto racing, and flying without ever leaving the comfort of your living room.
In the world of televised sports broadcasting, the computer has been nothing less than impressive. Take those flashy graphics, for instance.
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There are attractive screens of scores and statistics, possibly a digitized freeze-frame of tennis or racing-car action you saw live just seconds ago, and fully animated, cartoonish sequences of fantasy flights over a basketball court or football field.
The fast-paced world of computer graphics and animation has made all of the possible.
Combine applications with electronic scoreboards, computer-controlled ticketing, and all the other computerized activities performed by any profit- making enterprise and you have one very impressive array of computing power in the sports industry today.
Movies :
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Computers and movies first met when computers became the subjects of movies. Robots were among the earliest computer technologies to be worthy objects of moviemaking.
Then, with the 1950s, UNI VAC I, and the ominous presence of the Cold War and atomic weapons, movies began to portray the computer as an infallible, Big-Brother type of device that insensitive power managers would use to rule the world.
A major emphasis in movies today, of course, is the notion that computer systems are indeed fallible and that a human software oversight can cause some global disaster.
In the last several years computers have figured prominently in the actual creation of movies.
For example, movies such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Would have been impossible without computers to keep track of and integrate the numerous special effects involved. Many scenes in that film used computers to combine live images, drawings, and dynamic electronic models.
Music :
While creating music may be an art, the notion of sound is a matter of physics. Musicians frequently use computers called electronic synthesizers to store sounds, recall them from memory to have them played, and distort them in new and unusual ways.
The use of computer technology in creating music is a widespread reality today, and artists ranging from Stevie Wonder (popular Music) to Herbie Hancock (jazz) to Pierre Boulez (classical music) have accepted technology as an important force in the creation of their works.
Musicians use the computer like writers use a word processor, but, instead of words, they store, edit, and cut and paste sounds.
Today many musical pieces are so rich with electronically produced sounds that it’s difficult for a nonexpert to tell what came directly from an instrument and what was electronically enhanced. The computer plays many other important roles in the music industry today.
Art :
At one time virtually the only way you could create an artistic image was to paint, draw, weave, sculpt, and the like completely by your own hand. Then the Gutenberg press arrived, and images could be mass produced.
Although that event probably created panic among people contemplating a calligraphy career, they would be Renoirs and Van Goghs had little to worry about.
The industrial revolution gave further rise to the so-called industrial arts, and machines such as the Jacquard loom, which could weave under program control, appeared.
When photography arrived in the mid-1800s, it threatened the painters of the day, but it later evolved into an art form of its own, with a different set of standards.
Now that the computer has arrived, there are new perceived threats to artists on all levels-but there are also great opportunities.
With a computer, images of virtually any shape can be created, colored in any of millions of colors, enlarged, rotated, blended, combined with other images, illuminated by one or more shadow-casting light sources, and so forth.
Also, colors, positions, and shapes of objects can be changed at electronically fast speeds to create new images. A computer enables the artist to see a variety of images and store the most promising of them, all in a span of time that would be impossible with only canvas and brush.
Nonetheless, painters are still far from being replaced. Like photography, computer art is becoming an art form in its own right.