Here’s a headline you likely missed amidst the flurry of world war updates and cannibal-pedophiles-eating-babies stories that have been clogging the newswires of late:

“ENIAC, the First General-Purpose Digital Computer, Turns 80!”

Yes, while the 80th anniversary of the announcement of the advent of the “Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer” (ENIAC) may not be the flashiest or most important story in the world right now, it does provide us with a milestone for evaluating a turning point in human history—the dawn of the Information Age—and the two narratives that have been proffered to explain that turning point.

On one hand, we have the shiny, happy, techno-optimist view of the development of the computer and its impact on society.

On the other hand, we have a dark, dystopian tale of how humanity, enslaved by a techbro oligarchy, is being algorithmically steered into the slaughter pen.

The question of which framing is correct (and whether we can escape these narratives altogether) is not a trivial matter. In fact, it may determine the fate of humanity itself.

Today, let’s take a look at the rise of the computer, what it means, and where the human/computer symbiosis is going from here.