“Extraordinary Ordinary Things” highlights truly world-transforming things that have become so embedded in daily life we scarcely notice them. These two ideas may seem far apart, if not incongruous. In reality, they are quite close together, almost like conjoined (Siamese) twins. Computers today underlie virtually everything in the modern world, either directly or, more often, indirectly. From commercial, cultural, and scientific ideas to life-altering products and services, computers are the catalyst. Extraordinary!

Immediately after graduating from UCLA (University of California at Los Angeles) in 1965, I served as a volunteer middle-school teacher in the newly independent country of Tanzania (formerly Tanganyika and Zanzibar).

To teach a lesson on heat and temperature, one day I brought ice cubes from my kerosene-powered refrigerator to class. (Electricity was still unknown in this part of the country.) I put the ice cubes into a glass of water along with a thermometer to observe how the temperature dropped. When the lesson was done, it seemed that virtually the whole class swarmed my desk, excitedly chattering away in Swahili. Fortunately, I knew enough of the language to understand what they were so excited about. They desperately wanted to feel the ice cubes! On the high plateau where the school was located, the temperature was comfortably warm all year round. These students had never handled anything really cold, and certainly nothing as cold as ice.

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