The first phase was amazement. Publicists called computers ‘electronic brains’, while people in the know were saying that they were not much like brains at all. What could [people] really be expected to do? This question was answered according to temperament, but many [people] suspected two things. Computers might turn out to be incomprehensible to the [person themself], and therefore a substantial personal threat; in any case the cost might be ruinous. But the good [person] is made of sterner stuff than this. In the second stage [they] very properly came to grips with the nature of the machine, and soon found out that the machine is a moron. Not only did this discovery remove unjustifiable fears, but it took away all sense of wonder, and that was a pity.

Although present-day computers fall very short of the human brain in so many capabilities, they are in just as many ways very much superior to the computers in our skulls. But in this second phase people lost sight of the fact, and they fell to discussing rather trivial problems…

…some [businesses] decided to go ahead and install computers. And that brought us to the third phase, in which most businesses remain. There is a rather widespread use of computers in the role of new lamps for old. Routine office work is done by machines; sometimes staff have been saved, sometimes not.

– Stafford Beer, “Brain of the Firm”

cherry-picked to suit my narrative