It has been suggested that the abstracting technique be applied at the opposite end of the cycle with a vengeance amounting to birth control of new articles. A Lockheed Electronics engineer proposes a technical library that not only accepts new material, but also rejects any that is not new. Here, of course, we may be skirting danger of the type risked by human birth control exponents—that of unwittingly depriving the world of a president, or a powerful scientific finding. Perhaps the screening, the function of “garbage disposal,” as one blunt worker puts it, should be left as an after-the-fact measure.
Despite early setbacks, the computer is making progress in the job of information retrieval. Figures of a 300 per cent improvement in efficiency in this new application are cited over the last several years. Operation HAYSTAQ, a Patent Office project in the chemical patent section accounting for one-fifth of all patents, showed a 50 per cent improvement in search speed and 100 per cent in accuracy as a result of using automated methods. Desk-size computer systems with solid-state circuits are being offered for information retrieval.
The number of scientific information centers in this country, starting with one in 1830, reached 59 in 1940 and now stands at 144. Significantly, of 2,000 scientists and engineers working at these centers, 381 are computer people.
Some representative information retrieval applications making good use of computer techniques are the selection of the seven astronauts for the Mercury Project from thousands of jet pilots, Procter & Gamble’s Technical Information Service, demonstration of an electronic law library to the American Bar Association, and Food Machinery and Chemical Corporation’s Central Research Laboratory. The National Science Foundation, the National Bureau of Standards, and the U.S. Patent Office are among the government agencies in addition to the military services that are interested in electronic information retrieval.
Summary
The impact of the computer on education, language and communication, and the handling of information is obviously already strongly felt. These inroads will be increased, and progress hastened in the years ahead of us. Perhaps of the greatest importance is the assigning to the machine functions closer to the roots of all these things. Rather than simply read or translate language, for example, the computer seems destined to improve on it. The same applies to the process of teaching and to the storage and retrieval of data. The electronic computer has shown that it is not a passive piece of equipment, but active and dynamic in nature. It will soon be as much a part of the classroom and library as books; one day it may take the place of books themselves.
Lichty, © Field Enterprises, Inc.
“How come they spend over a million on our new school, Miss Finch, and then forget to put in computer machines?”
“’Tis one and the same Nature that rolls on her course, and whoever has sufficiently considered the present state of things might certainly conclude as to both the future and the past.”