One might well begin with the conclusion: ‘It is quite obvious that computer systems are rapidly being accepted on Norwegian ships’ although shipping opinion is still divided into two camps, the believers and the agnostics. The believers foresee a single large computer or several smaller systems covering most functions on board, the doubters think that computers are a passing fancy. There has certainly been too much talk about computers as if they were an end in themselves—the computer is an aid; in Noratom-Norcontrol we look on it as a component which enables us to solve certain system problems we were unable to tackle before, or to solve them better.