Are friends electronic?

The single Are ‘Friends’ Electric was released by the Tubeway Army in May 1979. It topped the UK singles charts for four weeks, despite the fact that it was over 5 minutes in length, a long time for a single record for that era. It was far from being a favourite of mine, as I couldn't recognize a tune of any sort, but I don't imagine that its composer, Gary Numan, was too perturbed by what I thought! It was one of the first records to feature a strong synthesizer riff, a forerunner of things to come, with modern day synthesizers featuring heavily in chart music today.

As Gary Numan's rendition heralded the synthesized era in music, the electronic era began in earnest around the same time, with computers becoming more powerful year on year, with the result that they have become an accepted part of everyday life for most of us. They have become our ‘electronic friends’, especially for those under the age of 35, but provide valuable functions for all of us. The newly revamped Dental Update website is testimony to the electronic age, with the papers published since 1999 now being available almost instantaneously at the press of a computer key. I have been astonished by the speed at which I can now access past papers, and I hope that all readers are now availing themselves of this fabulous new aid in finding dental ‘evidence’. In that regard, we have been advised that the ‘evidence-based’ route is how we should go in planning the care of our patients, with the true concept of evidence-based treatment involving the interrogation of the literature in order to obtain answers to questions relating to care of a particular patient, a potentially difficult and time-consuming process. However, the concept was put into perspective by Sackett and colleagues,1 who considered that ‘evidence’ was one part of a triumvirate, with personal experience (or personal evidence) also being important, as well as what the patient is prepared to have done or pay for (my addition!), stating ‘Neither (evidence or personal experience) alone is enough: even excellent clinical evidence may be inapplicable or inappropriate for an individual patient’.