Do Not Fold; 16

Do not phone then with a staple or mutilate this card. The slogan of the computer a University of Illinois radio service presents a series of programs about you and the computer from banks to hospitals and from airlines to music. It's application in this team and these programs will give you a glimpse of these countless applications and what they mean to you. Do not fold has taken a look at the possibilities of war without man. Dollars and cents and a super mixer run by computer. This program series has also examined a city built in air. The problems of selling tomatoes in tennis shoes and computer run farms tax returns wanted criminals airplanes and telephones and all required the help of the computer age. Even schools libraries and hospitals are changing because of electronic data processing. What has been and will be

the impact of these applications of the computer on today's program several guests discuss this important question and our moderator is Reed Duffy. Four faculty members at the University of Illinois in urban are here today to analyze the significance of this computer age and its meaning for the average man. Dr. Daniel Slotnick professor of computer science. Dr. Hines van firster professor of electrical engineering. Dr. Nathan Newmark professor of civil engineering. And Dr. William Ross Ashby professor of electrical engineering will participate in this discussion. First of all Dr. Slotnick could we consider the accusation that computers tend to create a rigid structure within a business. Do you think that flexibility gets lost in the shuffle. I found that mostly in an organization what tends to get very rigid. Are the people in the organization and it's very hard to get them changed. Computers are difficult to change and restructure you have to program but. At

least it's a job that you can estimate in advance just how hard it is and I don't. Think it's going to be as hard as changing people particularly in a business organization. Professor Manchester it's nice something to do because it's very hard to down the programming procedures in particular machines or is this one of them. What are the reasons for. Before they go for the difficulty in changing the people. Oh I think that the point I was attempting to make was that. The people when jobs are not computerised it's the people in the organization the accountants and the organization the people entrust the various detail in the business maintaining inventories that they are subject to rigid if occasion in ways which are sometimes even more annoying than the ways in which computers are rated higher. But does the computer itself cause that rigid if occasion.

I don't really think so and I think the computer will either reflect the rigidity that's present in an organization and perhaps accentuate it if it's already there is a consequence of actions of people. Or will have. Little or no effect on those things which I think are more representative of individuals attitudes. But what about the economic factors involved when you head of programs with a lot of money invested in them in the software. Then it is the problem of changing it is an economic problem. So that there is a tendency to stay with things that have already been developed even though some improvements can be made or something more flexible can be developed. I realize this is in part a fallacious argument because there's always bright young people who come up with new ideas and new kinds of programs that are so incredibly more efficient than the old programs that they generally tend to displace them. On the other hand we've seen even in our own computer

programs or technical calculations a tendency to stay with something that may be outdated merely because it's so expensive to change it. I think you can identify easily when that happens in a computer installation. But to some extent there is an investment in any procedure or method that one employs in a laboratory or if. The investment isn't always on one page where you can always add it up and know what it is. And the computers make it easier to do that. But I don't really believe that. That question is qualitatively different than the one which happened today. And as you say mitigating strongly against that is the rapid change technical change in the computer field where the economics change every few years. Professor Ashby one of the things that. I'd like to mention is that rigidity cation sounds horrible but in actual fact

whenever any any machinery or means of communication comes in in order to make a large organization run better the the the the prevention of change is just as important as the change it self. For instance an electrical machinery insulators are just as important as the conductors often forgotten but they are essential in the same way in the brain. If you read the books it often suggests that the more communication you have between all the parts of the brain the better. But in actual fact too much communication can be just as harmful as too little too much fluidity too much flexibility can be just as harmful as too little. And as I see it the art of using computers in the future will be to use the rigidity and the flexibility in imbalance propulsion too much flexibility you might just have chaos so that if one is going to use. Systems as fast and and as flexible as computers one is called Have a great deal of all of the sort of thing that we call ask

Kellett and just to keep things together and to stop it from being completely a mole for us. Professor Newmark. I'd like to suggest that the computer is really an extension of the human brain. It's an amplifying device to make the brain more efficient. And so it has the same faults and virtues that the brain has and all of the human traits that we have when we don't use computers will be with us when we do use computers in new and novel ways in the future so that it isn't the characteristic of the computer that we should be talking about it's the characteristics of people who use the computers in the particular ways that they now do things even without computers or the communication devices used a part of this problem. Do you feel that the communication with computers is rather clumsy at the stage. Professor Brian first or. I was I've been I'm happy by using the bad communication. I think when you started off I think your question's a release. I don't know whether we really want to

communicate with the machine. I think extending a little bit is anthropomorphic but I was a little bit too long. For is I don't communicate with my call was by the wrist watch. If I ask for is the following question what's the time. This is a very good at it and then I go to my retrieve all system. I turn my left arm around to look at it and see it is such and such. Do I communicate means by which I don't think it is. I am reading it all for something like that something is generated in my mind the source for that I know I am not already too late a little bit without appointment as usual and so on so far these are the words which mean something to people I think. Related business human discourse and into trends and so on so forth. If these ads which have been taken directly from the. Living domain this out. Careful criticism apply to machines and I think two

peculiar dangers me arise the one that we may believe that indeed we my with watch communicates with me because I'm using the word communicating with my with lunch and the second thing is that we think then communication is just based on looking at with watches. So it is a danger in two directions it stops us from searching what are the real things when communications go on. Second we believe that already on that low level communication has been achieved the same thing as for instance another beautiful example I think they're using the term of memory for a machine part of the memory in the machine a point since tapes every time his beautiful storage devices but they have cost nothing to do with the memory as we think of it when we talk about my memories of my trip to Europe as such and such which we do not go to a music store and say Would you please give me the memory of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. He would say please would you send me the tape of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Our record of Beethoven's Fifth

Symphony. We are talking about a memory of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony but of course by using finds the term memory in for what is in fact a storage system for electrical signals. It has been propped up by most engineers some unfortunate Must-See among some experimental psychologists to believe when they look into human memory that in fact they have to search for some causal tapes of magnetic drums in the brain in order to find the memory and the same time the computer people are so hippy about that wonderful storage systems that they constantly refer to. I really retrieve this from that memory and things like that which is nothing else. The retrieval of a single you just get that in what you get out. But if you don't get that thing what you get out for instance if I eat a fill in your and somebody asked me what did you eat and I say you really mean your own I don't use a Philly New York. You see I just say I ate a Philly New York. So there is something entirely different going on the computer. I mean will be extremely unhappy if you put an electric signal in and you get

something else out for it. He would say this is all I was a machine can turn it to the people that made it in the start communicating you say it would be a very lousy human being who produces out of his pocket the Philly New York museum would say what party say over my stories over there. I got a lot of labor communicating with computers has been the way we're gone. In order to answer some bizarre psychological human needs not in order to. Let the machine help you more in the work you do it. That is the orientation is weird and so much of the work and so called computer communications in the past decade has been devoted to creating an environment in which both the computer and the person using the computer can be as inefficient

as possible in the partnership. As it does seems to be reticence to recognize. The computer's capabilities. To arrive at a sensible division of labor. Seems to be a need which I can't understand is having a scientific basis to interact very closely with a computer. Somehow all the time you know what it is it is doing sit there with an incredibly mismatched device like a light. And try to meddle. With the machine in some way. I can see it as recognizing very few with that image. But as some kind of a response to psychological needs on the part of the operator. Well I think part of this arises from the fact that there is an impedance mismatch between the person and the machine in the sense that they are given first dimension.

There are a few people who have a very good match and who can speak the language that the machine understands very effectively and the machine can respond quickly. But there are a great many people who use machines and a great many more who are potential users who have to have some sort of a dialect developed for them. And we have made great progress in the developing what you might call problem oriented languages for certain specific uses of machines and a great deal more of this will probably be done so that a great many people can use computers but hey. Talking to the computer in a language that they understand and which the computer is made to understand through a translation or process done by a few very competent people who can do the intermediate job of translating. But if we don't do something of the sort we'll end up with a sort of an elite. Very few people who can talk to the machine and large horde of people who can only have

interaction with the machine through these intermediaries and we run a very great resk in this regard if the machine is made essentially the property of a very few people will have a sort of intellectual elite of a new type than we've ever had before who in a real sense will control the destinies of humanity and a much closer way of and has heretofore been possible. I think we have to guard against this because in a sense this is something of assault has happened where they the punched card which we defied in 18. 90 or something like that. Mr Hollerith rigid if I didn't go anywhere ever since no one can change it now at least I imagine it would wreck civilization practically to try and alter the size of the punch standard punch card and of course everything has to go through this. This bottleneck in the standardized form. Fortunately because the punch card is very flexible so a great number of different

things can be said. But the question of the bottleneck on the channel of communication. I think oil is always going to be there simply because humans are the primary factor of the of what we are interested in and the primary effect in the machine of all bunches of electrons actually going through tiny junctions and so on they are so far apart physically but they will have to be a number of stages as for the human. What's meaningful to the human being slowly to get changed over easily becomes something that affects a bunch of noise of electrons. Professor Newmark do you think that the computer is in a sense beyond control. Is the average man and possibly even the computer expert unable to pull the plug. I think that we have to have a means of using computers that a large number of people can use effectively with some reasonable degree of facility. If we don't have this then I don't think we can use computers properly. This

means a good deal of work on the part of a few people to provide this special language shall we say the impedance match between the larger mass of users and the machines. But I doubt if it's a feasible concept that everyone can use the computer. There will only be relatively small portion of the population who can every use a very large computer at all well. I don't know what the proportion will be but even amongst the highly trained people and in a university such as ours I would say that not more than half can use a computer. Do we use it with any facility. Possibly less than that with any real facility and so it may well remain outside the reach of the large mass of population and this may be one of the very difficult things about the future when computers will become

even more prominent than they are now. You have to have. A much more orderly concept of what you want to do and how you want to do it to use a computer than I think most people have about most of the things that they do. You can't just make decisions on the basis of intuitive feelings and use a computer at all. You have to have a plan of some sort and this may be a very serious difficulty. On the other hand if you have some sort of a concept of what you want to do then you are able to. Extend the capabilities of your reasoning much further with a computer than you can otherwise. I think the question reiterating something is another question which is not between or about 1955 poll most I think in human use of human beings I think in this very good book not at Minas they ask really

computers perhaps in the future will run the people instead of people running the computers that means who is going to be in control of whom and I have the feeling that this question can be interpreted in two ways. In the one way that one assumes that machines are doing all the positions of people and then they start coming out and start from Natal and interfering with people's lives and decisions making things like that. This bias I think that idea nobbut me in the head when he asked this question but I think it can be done in also. This is something to do with my earlier remarks when I said when I said we are using our to promote or to describe some provisions of this systems and that is that we start to believe that these systems are doing indeed that stuff. That means we transfer our responsibilities which we have to to the machines. That means it is if I have a system in which I believe strongly that it thinks for me or it does all these things and it's not just the device which I can use in order to clarify my own thinking or something like that then I'm transferring in a very peculiar

uncanny way. My feeling to the system which of course I mean that I have lots of magic I mean magical thinking is just that sort of thing I mean but you just take an object or stroll J something very nice. Astrology where you say well let's ask the stars in which way I should behave so it is the strength of believe I put into the function of the system which is then running me. Had I surprised one by a British friends by telling him that during World War Two the British Admiralty had a stronger job which had to tell them how to move their fleet here all after is it to you. You are absolutely crazy. We have not people who believe in this nonsense and I said no you don't. But I dove believes in astrology and therefore if you who know Astrology you will know what to do. Now if we have to know exactly what he's been so i think

i hope this is the magic number to eliminate what I mean by transferring one's own responsibility. Responsibilities I think to the stars and to move things all into machines or whatever. If removing it so to say from oneself and putting it into some box of a paperback books might be happier. Horace Colbert might be a dollar might be irked or something but you might be a computer. What about his criticism of computers. Might it be justified. I think that just for example you have the case where nuclear power the fact that there are 5 or so countries with nuclear weapons has made it important to everyone on the planet. Who are the rulers of these countries I think the world 30 years ago could tolerate an occasional idiot in the White House. But right now really I guess the situation doesn't permit an idiot in the White House for anybody and computers can cause you know to be a major pain and act everybody if

somebody blew up the planet. And I think that computers. Are in a somewhat analogous situation in that the fact that data can be collected on a massive scale and it's possible to have residing in one place and it will reside in fact in many cases does already reside in one place. Everybody who's in comics eats a certain dollar for the wrong guy gets his hands on that. It can result in minor annoyances like several more telephone and mail solicitations from various profit nonprofit organizations. And as the data becomes deeper and more urgent and the access the database grows and becomes more acceptable. There again is the danger that someone can misuse it in ways perhaps not evidently as deadly as someone can misuse nuclear weapons. But at least affect the quality of our lives if not our lives

themselves may not be able to kill us. They could just make a dreadful bore to be alive. And that's a man a song song maybe and more important to other people and perhaps but it also has a problem of the. Possible misinformation that maybe it will help people in other words if there are two problems a host of information about you that may be available to anyone who inquires about it. This is one question. The other is if this information is shot through with a lot of misinformation about you then it may be a very serious matter. Even with the threat of misinformation our invasion of privacy can economic advantages justify the use of a computer. Professor Slotnick Why does man continue to rely upon computers that computers have justified themselves in our society in every instance.

On the basis of some economic deliberation. And it has given us a much greater abstract capability to plan we haven't realized as much gain from this again because. The mechanisms for planning are very deeply ingrained at every level in our society. Economic Planning scientific planning agricultural planning social planning to the extent that it's done at all. But it does. The computer in the planning area poses a lot of the problem here we clearly have a tool which will permit us to plan. In some ways far more satisfactorily. And when we continue to deny it's using it to help us plan better it more clearly identifies the rational and non-rational aspects of planning to our standing in this way makes our long

term contribution I think is very important. But again I think there is the problem of how much responsibility do we shove over to this fellow which we call computer hobby maintain our standards. I've seen for instance just recently I came back from Washington where a group of city planners had put in most of what they thought is necessary in a city into a computer system that generated the city and they tell me oh look we have generated the city about there is no need for you to watch. He said Yeah but don't these guys because we can pipe everything's on television into each home so the kids can sit at home. You can learn things from the initial screen. Just for heaven's sake. Kids are not in school in order to learn mathematics loud about writing. Kids are in school to learn about each other are to keep each other in the Sheens to learn for little birds and to do all these things they will never learn that stuff about television.

So I mean you know what I saw. Think it is even Friday maybe what comes out of the computer told me this can be dangerous but usually the computer told me something which seems to be a pretty lousy way I'll be stakes in asking the questions. Then it's fine but the question How much do you push over to him. Again all the anxieties that are expressed about the puter many of them very legitimate. Are not anxieties about computers at all. What about the people who go into computers and. The anxieties are realistic and not to be denied. Because I personally am very anxious about what people do and don't do. I've had a rather sanguine that people act with perfect wisdom over time but they're not questions about computers at all. I get the same question sometimes. Nearly all the difficulties are raised about computers are primarily the difficulties of claiming a powerful assistant whether human or anything like that one causing a very well known expert of

very dominating character into a business to give advice. There's always the danger that before long he will begin giving orders and running the business. And this is just the problem of calling in a powerful assistant. If one calls in things like a steam engine as a powerful assistant they did great physical damage 100 years ago before they really learned to make them. Vibration free and so on but gradually they learned from today jet engines handling an enormous quantity of physical power without shaking the craft to pieces. We gradually learned how to call in a great deal of physical power and not or may not be damaged by it and presumably will learn to call in these other types of power also. But most of the difficulties are exactly the same as asking anybody to come and when one says Jim come on give me a hand this is the trouble what I do is ineffective in which case he does nothing you're safe. But if he's if he's effective he'll do it gyms why and you've lost control Partly this is the price of asking someone else

to do one's job or to attempt to to gain something to move up to a higher level of performance there. Former faculty members at the University of Illinois in our man I have been discussing the impact of a computer upon modern society guest on this program about the meaning of today's applications of computers were Dr. Daniel Slotnick professor of computer science. Dr. Hinds fun firster professor of electrical engineering. Dr. Nathan Newmark professor of civil engineering. And Dr. William Ross Ashby professor of electrical engineering. This was the final program in a series presented by the University of Illinois radio service. These programs have brought a new meaning to the slogan of the computer age. Do not abandon staple or mutilate this card.

This program was distributed by the national educational radio network.