An introduction to this special issue: Computer applications

I guess that the title of this special section serves to differentiate geophysical applications that use computers from the types that don’t use computers … seen any lately? (I haven’t either, except for some problem solutions my students have turned in.) Nonetheless, there are some subjects in geophysics that are more appropriate in a collection of papers on computer applications than in other parts of the journal. These include papers that describe computer techniques, specifically, to solve problems in geophysics of which we may or may not have been aware. The selected suite of papers illustrates a spectrum of computer applications from the obvious (“Why didn’t I think of it”) to the complex.