Dangers of digital dependency | Letters

Technological addiction was a problem even in the early days of computer programming, according to Dave Smith, while Peter McKenna says search engine algorithms alone are not to blame for gender bias

I found Moya Sarner's article on digital addiction and her story of Lady Geek's reverse ferret from digital guru to prophet of doom absorbing, timely, and somehow familiar (Is it time to fight the digital dictators?, 15 March). She also quotes Professor Mark Griffiths, director of the International Gaming Research Unit at Nottingham Trent University as having invented the term "technological addiction" in 1995. In 1971 I started a degree in maths, electronics and physics at Chelsea College, University of London which involved a certain amount of programming on the college's Elliott 803 mainframe.

I remember clearly our lecturer warning us very sternly about the dangers of getting over-involved in programming, quoting the case of an earlier student who had spent so many nights in the computer room, addicted to getting his programs just-so, that he neglected all his other studies and eventually failed to make progress in anything. Remember that this was back in the days when our programs were written in Fortran on decks of hand-punched 80-column cards.

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