As a mathematical whiz, the computer will relieve us of our money worries. Coupled with the credit card, perhaps issued to us at birth, a central computer will permit us to make purchases anywhere in the world and to credit our account with wages and other income. If we try to overdraw, it may even flash a warning light as fast as we put the card in the slot! This project interests General Dynamics researchers.
Of more importance than merely doing bookkeeping is the impact the computer will have on the planning and running of businesses. Although it is found in surveys that every person thinks computer application reaches to the level just below his in the management structure, pure logic should ultimately win out over man’s emotional frailties at all levels. Operations research, implemented by the computer, will make for more efficient businesses. Decisions will increasingly be made not by vice-presidents but by digital computers. At first we will have to gather the necessary information for these electronic oracles, but in time they will take over this function themselves.
Business is tied closely to education, and we have had a hint of the place the computer will make for itself in education. The effect on our motivation to learn of the little need for much learning will be interesting. But then, is modern man a weaker being because he kills a tiger with a high-powered rifle instead of club or bare hands—or has no need to kill the tiger in the first place?
After having proved itself as a patent searcher, the computer is sure to excel as inventor. It will invade the artistic field; computers have already produced pleasing patterns of light. Music has felt the effect of the computer; the trend will continue. Some day not far off the hi-fi enthusiast will turn on his set and hear original compositions one after the other, turned out by the computer in as regular or random form as the hearer chooses to set the controls. Each composition will bring the thrill of a new, fresh experience, unless we choose to go back in the computer’s memory for the old music.
The computer will do far more in the home than dream up random music for listening pleasure. The recorded telephone answerer will give way to one that can speak for us, making appointments and so on, and remembering to bring us up to date when we get home. A small computer to plug in the wall may do other things like selecting menus and making food purchases for next week, planning our vacations, and helping the youngsters with their homework. It is even suggested that the computer may provide us with child-guidance help, plus psychological counsel for ourselves and medical diagnoses for the entire family. The entire house might be computerized, able to run itself without human help—even after people are gone, as in the grimly prophetic story by Ray Bradbury in which a neat self-controlled home is shown as the curtains part in the morning. A mechanical sweeper runs about gathering up dust, the air conditioning, lighting, and entertainment are automatic, all oblivious to the fact that one side of the house is blackened from the blast of a bomb.
Perhaps guarding against that eventuality is the most important job the computer can do. Applications of computing power to government have been given; and hints made of the sure path from simple tasks like the census and income tax, Peace Corps work, and so on to decision-making for the president. Just as logic is put to work in optimizing business, it can be used to plan and run a taut ship of state. At first such an electronic cabinet member will be given all available information, which it will evaluate so as to be ready to make suggestions on policy or emergency action. There is more reason for it going beyond this status to become an active agent, than there is against. Government has already become so complex that perhaps a human brain, or a collection of them, cannot be depended on to make the best possible decision. As communications and transportation are speeded up, the problem is compounded. Where once a commander-in-chief could weigh the situation for days before he had to commit himself and his country to a final choice, he may now be called upon to make such a far-reaching decision in minutes—perhaps minutes from the time he is awakened from a sound sleep. The strongest opposition to this delegation of power is man’s own vanity. No machine can govern, even if it can think, the politician exclaims. The soldier once felt the same way; but operations research has given him more confidence in the machine, and SAGE and NORAD prove to him that survival depends on the speed and accuracy of the electronic computer.
Incurable romanticism is found even among our scientific community. The National Bureau of Standards describes a computer called ADAM, for Absolutely Divine Automatic Machine. But the scientists also know that ADAM, or man, needs help. Rather than consider the machine a tool, or even an extension of man’s mind, some are now concerned with a kind of marriage of man and machine in which each plays a significant part. Dr. Simon Ramo, executive vice president of Thompson Ramo Wooldridge, Inc., has termed this mating of the minds “intellectronics.” The key to this combination of man’s intellect and that of electronics is closer rapport between the team members.
Department of Defense
Computer use in defense is typified in this BIRDIE system of the United States Army.
The man-machine concept has grown into a science called, for the present at least, “synnoetics,” a coinage from the Greek words syn and noe meaning “perceive” and “together.” This science is defined as the treating of the properties of composite systems, consisting of configurations of persons, mechanisms, plant or animal organisms, and automata, whose main attribute is that their ability to invent, to create, and to reason—their mental power—is greater than the mental power of their components.