The proliferation of micro-computers will doubtless

            cause many social dislocations.  The development of the

            silicon micro-chips, which are able to process and store

            information at the same rate large computer memories were

            able to do, yet at only fractions of the cost and size, has

            been hard for most people to comprehend.  It is bringing

            about a new wave of apprehension, that unless one is computer

            literate a person will be outdated and lost in the explosion

            of new computer technology.  However, the new hope poeple

            must recognize is that the bugeoning technology will create

            an almost limitless range of new products and services and

            therefore a great new job market.  the public must also

            realize that when most people refer to computer literacy,

            this generally implies a command of programing skills, and

            most computer related jobs in business today don't require

            computer literacy; at most they demand nothing more than

            keyboard competence.

                 In the beginning when computers first made a substantial

            impact on the real world, outside of science fiction novels,

            thos who were the traditional masters understood machine

            language and could write programs in it to aid them in the

            problem they wanted to solve.  It then progressed to the

            second generation wheresoftware machine code could be

            replaced by choppy abbreviations such as MPY for multiply.

            This however, called for the memorization of many complex,

            confusing and fragmented symbols of expression.  More



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            recently comprters were told what to do in symbolic languages

            {ie: cobol, pascal} trying to make programing as easy as

            speaking English.  Yet, this is being replaced by the vore

            flexible and efficient fourth generation which offers

            business executives freedom to exercise ingenuity and

            imagination in asking what if questions that bear on key

            decisions about cash flow, net worth, output, and market

            share.

                 The new fourth generation software allows executives to

            plan by building complex models of business and its

            environment without programmer assistance.  Essentially with

            this new software and a network of computers tied together by

            a single, completely integrated set of programs, the

            operations of production can be brought together for a common

            goal of cutting costs and increasing profits.  Up until the

            present, computers had been used to handle individual tasks

            such as collecting data, tracking devices, or keeping an

            account of inventory, making it difficult if not impossible

            to get the different facets of production agreeing withone

            another.  With this conglomeration of corperate extremities,

            a companies operation department and department heads were

            likely to be working with conflicting data, old data, miss

            classified data and even missing data.  So when attempts were

            made to bring together the system's departments they often

            clashed.  Therefor, new software programs have been developed

            to eliminate such problems which could be detrimental to the



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