In his book, Industrial Dynamics, Dr. J. W. Forrester points out that a high-speed digital computer can be used in analyzing as many as 2,000 variables such as costs, wages, sales, and employment. This is obviously so far beyond human capability that the advantage of computer analysis becomes evident. A corollary benefit is the speed inherent in the computer which makes it possible to test a new policy or manufacturing program in hours right in the computer, rather than waiting for months or years of actual implementation and possible failure. For these reasons another expert has predicted that most businesses will be using computer simulations of their organizations by 1966. Regardless of the timetable, it is clear that the computer has jumped into business with both its binary digits and will become an increasingly powerful factor.
Lichty, © Field Enterprises, Inc.
“Our new ‘brain’ recognizes the human factor, doctor!... After feeding it the symptoms, it gives the diagnosis and treatment.... But YOU set the fee!”
“Men have become the tools of their tools.”
—Thoreau
9: The Computer and Automation
In his movie, City Lights, Charlie Chaplin long ago portrayed the terrible plight of the workman in the modern factory. Now that the machine is about to take over completely and relieve man of this machinelike existence, it is perhaps time for Charlie to make another movie pointing up this new injustice of civilization or machine’s inhumanity to man. It seems to be damned if it does and damned if it doesn’t.
For some strange reason, few of us become alarmed at the news of a computer solving complex mathematics, translating a book, or processing millions of checks daily, but the idea of a computer controlling a factory stimulates union reprisals, editorials in the press against automation, and much general breast-beating and soul-searching. Perversely we do not seem to mind the computer’s thinking as much as we do its overt action.
It is well to keep sight of the fact that automation is no new revolution, but the latest development in the garden variety of industrial revolution that began a couple of centuries ago in England: