Ratcliffe was saying that we can virtually unlimited mistakes. To correct a mistake on a computer, one can simply and easily press the [ back ] button and start again without consequence. Computers can also be reset, again, without consequence. Ratcliffe realized that the computer allows us to take toughts, put them into words, draw representations, model our thoughts and then try and apply them through a virtual reality. If you have ever seen someone design a device on a computer, not only do they draw it’s structural form, they try and apply real world forces and test it before it is ever built. Saves time and money. Everything from bicycles to skyscrapers to jet liners and space stations are designed on computers before they are built in the real world.

Duell is refering to our psyche. Inventors are trying to fulfill a dream, a desire when they invent. They are trying to build the bridge apon which they can cross from problem to solution.

I hope this helps.

The first one:perhaps Ratcliffe was Technophobic(i.e.afraid of techonology)

The second one:Our Inventions mirror our secret wishes.

Whenever someone invented something, in a way they were fantasising.The guy that invented the car possibly had dreams of travelling and was maybe an adventurer

Hope this helps!:)

“A computer lets you make more mistakes than any other invention in human history.” – It means that we make computers capable of knowing what we mean, rather than what we do. For instance, you can might type “one” when you mean to type “won”, and the computer will know what you meant. The underlying tone of the quote means that the writer thinks that we are happy letting computers fix our mistakes for us, making us more complacent and lazy than we should be.

“Our inventions mirror our secret wishes.” – This is a little tougher to understand, but I think what he means is that we only make inventions because we want or need something. If it wasn’t for our natural desire to create something that doesn’t exist, then we wouldn’t have progressed as far as we have – we would still be living in caves, hunting with our hands and eating our food without cooking it because we wouldn’t have developed the understanding of fire.

The first quote implies that historically, the invention which gives least mistakes, shared between you and this device, has been computers.

The second one suggests our sentience stimulates us to invent what we need.

Hope this helps