Carrol, give me a break.
The Hamming quote says what it says, and I kinda like that phrase. Check out the time when Hamming worked, his background (a mathematician), and how computers were considered back then (enhanced calculators).
So, Hamming´s contributions to telecommunications and his phrase about computing being more than just numbers (and calculus) shows to me a lot of foresight. Indeed nowadays computers are more communication devices than simple number crunchers, which was the role asigned to them during most of the 20th century.
That is the meaning I assign to Hamming´s quote. Of course, philosophically speaking anyone can use objects for any purpose they please.
Some, like you, use them as noise generators.
:-P
FC -- "The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers." Richard Hamming - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamming_code