Help with understanding a passage from "The Female Eunuch" [View all]

I've just begun the book, and as usual with books from 40+ years ago, there are references and language used I often don't get. For the most part, a dictionary and context works well enough, but every so often, it doesn't.

The passage is this:

"Such counsel will be called encouragement of irresponsibility, but the woman who accepts a way of life which she has not knowingly chosen, acting out a series of contingencies falsely presented as destiny, is truly irresponsible. To abdicate one's own moral understanding, to tolerate crimes against humanity, to leave everything to someone else, the father-ruler-king-computer, is the only irresponsibility."

I think I have a decent idea of what was meant by "father-ruler-king", but the "computer" part keeps throwing me for a loop. Perhaps it was meant as a symbol of power? Computers were a relatively recent devolopment then, and I could see that being a reasonable meaning.