Endless Ramblings

Background:

Our first lecture of ICM 501 by Alex Halavais mentions two popular theories which explain the relationship between society and inventions.  One is the Socialist Determinist position which maintains that inventions are created as an answer to existing needs.  The Technological Determinist or Hard Determinist position states that technology arrives and changes how society operates.  Dr. Halavais goes on to say that a combination of both positions might be most accurate.  This creates a third hybrid position.  With this in mind when considering the personal computer, which seems to be the most appropriate position?

Almost everyone is familiar with personal computers, and uses them on a daily basis.  We know from our own experience that they have changed society, because we all know how they have changed our lives.  In a very informal sense, we readily see aspects of the Technological Determinist position at work. But the first computers of 1930s and 40s were of very limited use, and were not personal or business machines.  Konrad Zuse built the Z1 in 1936.  Construction began on ENIAC in 1943, but it was primarily used by the military, and not by society at large.  Such a machine was not available to handle a corporate payroll, for instance.  Nor was it networked for communications

The Need for Information Storage and Retrieval:

Let’s see if we can show that functions of our present day computers were invented to fill a need of society.  This need can be identified using our reading materials from Module 1.

In a 1945 article titled: As We May Think, author Vannevar Bush writes:

There is a growing mountain of research. But there is increased evidence that we are being bogged down today as specialization extends. The investigator is staggered by the findings and conclusions of thousands of other workers—conclusions which he cannot find time to grasp, much less to remember, as they appear. Yet specialization becomes increasingly necessary for progress, and the effort to bridge between disciplines is correspondingly superficial.

In the above quote, Bush seems to be saying that there is too much information to handle.  There is no way to understand it all.  In fact there is no way to even remember it.  He goes on to write:

The difficulty seems to be, not so much that we publish unduly in view of the extent and variety of present day interests, but rather that publication has been extended far beyond our present ability to make real use of the record. The summation of human experience is being expanded at a prodigious rate, and the means we use for threading through the consequent maze to the momentarily important item is the same as was used in the days of square-rigged ships.

Here we see that society isn’t publishing excessive amounts of information.  A better method to keep track of the published information is sorely needed.  He expresses dismay at the antiquated methods available to to him.

Later in his article, Bush seemingly summarizes the problem: “A record if it is to be useful to science, must be continuously extended, it must be stored, and above all it must be consulted.”  The meaning here is that we need to keep track of our existing records in order to build on them.  We also need to store them in a way that makes them easy to find because we will need them.  The implication is that if we can’t find records when we need them, it’s as if they don’t exist.

The Need for Modeling:

In 1968, J.C.R. Licklider and Robert W. Taylor wrote an article titled: “The Computer as a Communication Device” .   They state that they have just attended a meeting using computers and enthusiastically write: “In two days, the group accomplished with the aid of a computer what normally might have taken a week.”  They credit this success to a need the computer fills.  They propose that effective and efficient communication requires “modeling”.

Briefly, modeling is a technique of presenting your concept to others.  This is done at meetings through the use of supporting materials, charts, graphs, visual aids, textual information, data, etc.  They consider this sharing of models to be essential to communication, and state: “How can we be sure that we are modeling cooperatively, that we are communicating, unless we compare models?”

Licklider and Taylor seem to feel that no technology previously offered this ability, and write: “The dynamics of such communication are so model-centered as to suggest an important conclusion: Perhaps the reason present-day two-way telecommunication falls so far short of face-to-face communication is simply that it fails to provide facilities for externalizing models.”

And so the authors have established a need that previously could only be satisfied by face to face interaction.  Computers were not used for this interactive purpose at the time.

The project meeting we have just described is representative of a broad class of human endeavor which may be described as creative informational activity. Let us differentiate this from another class which we will call informational housekeeping. The latter is what computers today are used for in the main; they process payroll checks, keep track of bank balances, calculate orbits of space vehicles, control repetitive machine processes, and maintain varieties of debit and credit lists. Mostly they have not been used to make coherent pictures of not well understood situations.

This last quote is an interesting one.  Computers haven’t been used yet for widespread interactive communication, but we can see that in 1968 they are accessible to society for storage, retrieval and updating of banking records.  They are emerging into mainstream usage.

The Demo As a Solution:

Also in 1968, Douglas Ingelbart gave a demonstration which linked two computers together.  His presentation featured a number of wonderful innovations such as the first mouse, a bit-mapped display which allowed point and click selection, groupware, and hypertext.  But most notable for our purposes was the connecting of two computers in two different locations, and the development of a functional network.  This seemingly satisfied the need expressed by Licklider and Taylor for a way that people in different locations could share their models.   As an aside, there is a striking difference between the experimental meeting that Licklider and Taylor mention, and the Ingelbart demonstration.  Licklider and Taylor describe using a number of screens to look at every one’s models.  In the Ingelbart demo, we see the mouse cursors of two different participants moving in the same screen.  Could it be that the Ingelbart system was more sophisticated?

Irrefutably, the Ingelbart demo was a major turning point for computers, and for interactive communication.  We can confirm that by the time of the demo, the need for a good storage and retrieval system was well on the way to being satisfied.  This may not be coincidence, as Ingelbart was quite familiar with Bush, and the article “As We May Think”.  We can also confirm by the Ingelbart demo that models could be shared, and modified according to a consensus.  While not widespread, online meetings were possible.  Our two needs have been satisfied.

Which Position is Appropriate?:

When considering information storage and retrieval, I feel there is a strong case for the Socialist Determinist position.  There seems to be a sufficient passing of time between when Bush expresses the need, and Ingelbart gives his demo of his system with it’s ability to store and manipulate files.  Even if Ingelbart wasn’t the first one to store and manipulate files, Bush tells us that the technology didn’t exist in 1945.  The emergence of this technology any time after 1945 would give credence to the Socialist Determinist position.

The issue of networked computers enabling group modeling is less clear.  Licklider and Taylor begin by mentioning that they had just participated in a meeting where they had seen the technology at work.  They use the modeling concept to express why computer communication is superior and desirable.  In doing so, they express the absence of the technology as a need, but it’s difficult to tell if they actually envisioned the need before they saw the solution.  The issue is further confused by the fact that their article was published in 1968 - the same year the demo was presented.  This could very well eliminate the appropriateness of the Socialist Determinist Position.  Perhaps the Technological Determinist position is best here.  Online communication and networking may have come into being because the development of the technology simply led society in that direction.