“Well, Mr. Frankel, who started this program, began to suffer from the computer disease that anybody who works with computers now knows about. It's a very serious disease and it interferes completely with the work. The trouble with computers is you play with them. They are so wonderful. You have these switches - if it's an even number you do this, if it's an odd number you do that - and pretty soon you can do more and more elaborate things if you are clever enough, on one machine.

After a while the whole system broke down. Frankel wasn't paying any attention; he wasn't supervising anybody. The system was going very, very slowly - while he was sitting in a room figuring out how to make one tabulator automatically print arc-tangent X, and then it would start and it would print columns and then bitsi, bitsi, bitsi, and calculate the arc-tangent automatically by integrating as it went along and make a whole table in one operation.

Absolutely useless. We had tables of arc-tangents. But if you've ever worked with computers, you understand the disease - the delight in being able to see how much you can do. But he got the disease for the first time, the poor fellow who invented the thing.”

― Richard P. Feynman, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!

> The fascination with technology rather than just to solve the problem at hand via the shortest critical path is a thing that has been puzzling me for a long time

Exactly. And fascination with technology is important, it is what keeps people learning and searching, finding better tools. The problem with it, is it has a pathological side.

Like the tool analogy, just because I found an experimental, electronic, automatic nail gun, voice activated, with blinking lights, doesn't mean I should use it when building my own house, if all I need is to hammer a few nails, a regular trusted hammer will do.