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.
[Illustration:
_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.
We get a not-too-fanciful look into the future in a paper by Dr. Louis
Fein presented in the summer 1961 issue of _American Scientist_, titled
“Computer-related Sciences (Synnoetics) at a University in 1975.” Dr.
Fein is an authority on computers, as builder of RAYDAC in 1952, and as
founder and president of the Computer Control Company. The paper
ostensibly is being given to alumni some years hence by the university
president. Dr. Fein tells us that students in the Department of
Synnoetics study the formal languages used in communication between the
elements of a synnoetic system, operations research, game theory,
information storage, organization and retrieval, and automatic
programming. One important study is that of error, called Hamartiology,
from the Greek word meaning “to miss the mark.”
The speaker tells us that this field was variously called cybernetics,
information science, and finally computer-related science before being
formally changed to the present synnoetics. A list of the courses
available to undergraduates includes:
Von Neumann Machines and Turing Machines
Elements of Automatic Programming
Theory, Design, and Construction of Compilers
Algorithms: Theory, Design, and Applications
Foundations of the Science of Models
The Theory, Design, and Application of Non-Numeric Models
Heuristics
Self-Programming Computers
Advice Giving—Man to Machine and Machine to Man
Simulation: Principles and Techniques
Pattern Recognition and Learning by Automata
The Grammar, Syntax, and Use of Formal Languages for Communication
Between Machine and Machine and Between Man and Man
Man-Automaton Systems: Their Organization, Use, and Control
Problem-Solving: an Analysis of the Relationship Between the
Problem-Solver, the Problem, and the Means for Solution
Measurements of the Fundamental Characteristics of the Elements of
Synnoetic Systems
Of course, synnoetics spills over into the other schools, as shown in
the following typical courses taught:
Botany Department
Machine-Guided Taxonomy in Botany
Business School
Synnoetic “Business Executives”
Engineering School
Theory of Error and Equipment Reliability
Design of Analog and Digital Computers
Humanities Department
Theory of Creative Processes in the Fine Arts
Law School
Patent and Precedence Searches with Computers
The Effect of Automata on the Legislative and Judicial Process
Mathematics Department
The Theory of Graphs and the Organization of Automata
Medical School
Computer-Aided Medical Diagnosis and Prescription for Treatment
Philosophy
The Relationships between Models and the Phenomena That Are Modeled
Psychology Department
Studies in Intuition and Intellect of Synnoetic Systems
Simulation in the Behavioral Sciences
Sociology Department
Synnoetics in Modern Society
The speaker proudly refers to the achievement of the faculty mediator
and a computer in settling the “famous” strike of 1970.
He simply got both sides first to agree that each would benefit by
concentrating attention—not on arguing and finally settling the issues
one at a time—but on arguing and finally settling on a program for an
automaton. This program would evaluate the thousands of alternative
settlements and would recommend a small class of settlements each of
which was nearly optimum for both sides. The automaton took only 30
minutes to produce the new contract last year. It would have taken one
year to do this manually, and even then it would have been done less
exhaustively. Agreeing on the program took one week. Of course, you have
already heard that in many areas where people are bargaining or trying
to make optimum decisions such as in the World Nations Organization, in
the World Court, and in local, federal, and world legislative bodies,
there is now serious consideration being given to convincing opposing
factions to try to agree on a program and having once agreed on it, the
contract or legislation or judgment or decision produced with the
program would be accepted as optimum for both sides. Automata may also
be provided to judges and juries to advise them of the effects of such
factors as weight of evidence on verdicts in civil cases.
Dr. Fein makes an excellent case for the usefulness of the science of
synnoetics; the main point of challenge to his paper might be that its
date is too conservatively distant. Of interest to us here is the idea
of man and machine working in harmony for the good of both.
Another paper, “The Coming Technological Society,” presented by Dr.
Simon Ramo at the University of California at Los Angeles, May 1, 1961,
also discusses the possible results of man-machine cooperation during
the remainder of the twentieth century. He lists more than a dozen
specific and important applications for intellectronics in the decades
immediately ahead of us. Law, medicine, engineering, libraries, money,
and banking are among these. Pointing out that man is as unsuited for
“putting little marks on pieces of paper” as he was for building
pyramids with his own muscles, he suggests that our thumbprints and
electronic scanners will take care of all accounting. Tongue in cheek,
he does say that there will continue to be risks associated with life;
for instance, a transistor burning out in Kansas City may accidentally
wipe out someone’s fortune in Philadelphia.
The making of reservations is onerous busywork man should not have to
waste his valuable time on, and the control of moving things too is
better left to the machine for the different reason that man’s unaided
brain cannot cope with complex and high-speed traffic arteries, be they
in space or on Los Angeles freeways. Business and military management
will continue to be aided by the electronic machine.
But beyond all these benefits are those more important ones to our
brains, our society, and culture. Teaching machines, says Dr. Ramo, can
make education ten times more effective, thus increasing our intellect.
And this improved intellect, multiplied by the electronic machine into
intellectronic brainpower, is the secret of success in the world ahead.
Instead of an automated, robotlike regimented world that some predict,
Ramo sees greater democracy resulting. Using the thumbprint again, and
the speed of electronics, government of our country will be truly by the
people as they make their feelings known daily if necessary.
Intellectronic legislation will extend beyond a single country’s
boundaries in international cooperation. It will smash the language and
communication barriers. It will permit and implement not only global
prediction of weather, but global control as well. Because of the rapid
handling of vast amounts of information, man can form more accurate and
more logical concepts that will lead to better relations throughout the
world. Summing up, Dr. Ramo points out that intellectronics benefits not
only the technical man but social man as well:
The real bottleneck to progress, to a safe, orderly, and happy
transition to the coming technological age, lies in the severe disparity
between scientific and sociological advance. Having discussed
technology, with emphasis on the future extension of man’s intellect, we
should ask: Will intellectronics aid in removing the imbalance? Will
technology, properly used, make possible a correction of the very
imbalance which causes technology to be in the lead? I believe that the
challenging intellectual task of accelerating social progress is for the
human mind and not his less intellectual partner. But perhaps there is
hope. If the machines do more of the routine, everyday, intellectual
tasks and insure the success of the material operation of the world,
man’s work will be elevated to the higher mental domains. He will have
the time, the intellectual stature, and hence the inclination to solve
the world’s social problems. We must believe he has the capability.
[Illustration:
_Thompson Ramo Wooldridge, Inc._
Information in many forms can be displayed with “polymorphic”
data-processing systems.
]
Antedating synnoetics and intellectronics is another idea of such a
relationship. In his book _The World, The Flesh and the Devil_, J. D.
Bernal considers man’s replacement of various of his body’s parts with
mechanical substitutes until the only organic remains would be his
brain. This is a sort of wrong-end-to synnoetics, but in 1929 when the
book was published there was already plenty of raw material for such a
notion. Wooden legs and hooks or claws for hands, metal plates for bone
material, for example; and the artificial heart already being developed.
More recently we have seen the artificial kidney used, along with other
organs. We have also added electronic gear to our organic components,
for example the “pacemaker” implanted in many laggard hearts to keep
them beating in proper cadence, plastic plumbing, and the like. There is
a word for this sort of part-organic, part-mechanical man: the name
“cyborg” for cybernetic organism was proposed by two New York doctors.
Their technical definition of cyborg is “an exogenously extended
organizational complex functioning as a homeostatic system.” There is of
course strong precedent in nature for the idea of such a beneficial
combination: symbiosis, the co-existence or close union of two
dissimilar organisms. The shark and his buddy, the pilot fish, are
examples; as are man and the many parasites to which he is host.
The idea of man being part of machine harks back to youthful rides in
soapbox racers, and later experiences driving cars or flying aircraft.
The pilot who flew “by the seat of his pants” in the early days easily
felt himself part of the machine. As planes—and cars—grew bigger and
more complex, this “one-manship” became more remote and harder to
identify. The jet transport pilot may well have the feeling of handling
a train when he applies force to his controls and must wait for it to be
amplified through a servo system and finally act on the air stream. In
the space age the man-machine combination not only survives but also
flourishes. Arthur C. Clarke writes in a science-fiction story of a
legless space man who serves well and happily in the weightlessness of
his orbiting satellite station.
We have two stages of development, then, not necessarily sequential: man
working with the machine and man as part of the machine. Several writers
have suggested a third stage in which the machine gradually supplants
the weaker human being much as other forms eased out the dinosaur of
old. William O. Stapledon’s book, _Last and First Men_, describes
immortal and literal giant brains. Many writers believe that these
“brains” will not be man’s, but those of the machine, since frail
humanity cannot survive in its increasingly hostile environment.
Arthur C. Clarke is most articulate in describing what he calls the
evolutionary cycle from man to machine. As the discovery of tools by
pre-man created man, so man’s invention of thinking machines set about
the workings that will make _him_ extinct. Clarke theorizes that this
breakthrough by man may well be his last, and that his machines will
“think” him off the face of the earth!
[Illustration:
_Hughes Aircraft Company_
Withstanding underwater pressures, at depths too great for human
divers, a Mobot vehicle demonstrates in this artist’s concept how it
can perform salvage and rescue operations at the bottom of the
ocean.
]
As we move into a technology that embraces communication at a distance
of millions of miles, survival under death-dealing radiation, and travel
at fantastic speeds, man’s natural equipment falters and he must rely on
the machine both as muscle and brain. Intelligence arose from life but
does not necessarily need life, in the sense we think of it, to
continue. Thus the extension of man’s intellect by electronics as hailed
by Dr. Ramo will lead ultimately to our extinction.
Clarke feels that the man-machine partnership we have entered, while
mutually benevolent, is doomed to instability and that man with his
human shortcomings will fall by the wayside, perhaps in space, which may
well be the machine’s true medium. What will remain will be the
intelligent machine, reduced as time goes on to “pure” intelligence free
to roam where it will and do what it wants, a matterless state of
affairs that even Clarke modestly disclaims the imagination to speculate
upon.
Before writing man off as a lost cause, we should investigate a strong
argument against such a take-over by the machine. Man stands apart from
other creatures in his consciousness of himself. He alone seems to have
the ability to ponder his fate, to reflect, and to write books about his
thoughts and dreams. Lesser animals apparently take what comes, do what
they have to do, and get through this life with a minimum of changing
their environment and themselves. Thus far the machines man has built do
not seem to be conscious of themselves. While “rational beings,”
perhaps, they do not have the “ability to laugh” or otherwise show
conscious awareness of their fate. A term applied to primitive
mechanical beings is “plugsuckers.” They learn to seek out a wall socket
or other form of energy and nourish themselves much as animals must do.
Just where man himself switched from plugsucking and began to rewire his
own world is a fuzzy demarcation, but he seems to have accomplished
this.
Consciousness is subjective in the extreme, and thus far only in fiction
have computers paused to reflect and consider what they have done and
its effect on them. However, the machine-builder, if not yet the machine
itself, is aware of this consciousness problem. The Hoffman Electronics
Corporation recently published an advertisement in the form of a
science-fiction story by A. E. Van Vogt. The hero is a defense vehicle,
patrolling the Pacific more effectively because it thinks it is king of
the Philippine Deep. Its name is Itself, and it has a built-in alter
ego. Hoffman admits it has not produced a real Itself—yet, but points
out calmly that the company’s business _is_ the conversion of scientific
fiction to scientific fact.
It has been suggested that mechanical consciousness may evolve when the
computer begins to reproduce itself, a startling conception blessed in
theory by logicians and mathematicians, as well as philosophers. A crude
self-replicating model has been built by scientists—a toy train that
reproduces itself by coupling together the proper cars to copy the
parent train, a whimsical reflection of Samuel Butler’s baby engines
playing about the roundhouse door.
Self-reproducing machines may depend on a basic “cell” containing a
blueprint of what it should look like when complete, which simply hunts
around for the proper parts and assembles itself. In the process it may
even make an improvement or two. Having finished, it will make a carbon
copy of its blueprint and start another “baby” machine on the way.
Writers on this subject—some under the guise of science-fiction—wonder
at what point the _machines_ will begin to wonder about how _they_ came
to be. Will they produce philosophic or religious literature, or will
this step in evolution prove that consciousness was a bad mutation, like
seven fingers or three heads, and drop it from the list of instructions?
Clarke admits that the take-over by the machines is centuries off;
meantime we can enjoy a golden age of intellectronic partnership with
the machine. Linus Pauling, pointing out that knowledge of molecular
structure has taken away the mystery of life, hopes that a “molecular
theory of thinking” will be developed and so improve man that he may
remake his thoughts and his world. Mathematician John Williams believes
that existing human intelligence can preserve its distinction only by
withdrawing from competition with the machine and defining human
intelligence rigorously enough to exclude that of the machines. He
suggests using the computer not just for a molecular theory of thinking,
but also in the science of genetics to _design_ our children!
Whatever lies ahead, it seems obvious that one of the most important
things the computer can help us think about is the computer itself. It
is a big part of our future.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Index
Abacus, 5, 21, 22, 60, 85, 129, 178, 181
Abstracting computer, 245, 248
Accuracy
analog computer, 82
digital computer, 87
Ackerman, 110
ADAM computer, 258
Adaptive principle, 205
Adders, 107, 108, 115
Adding machine, 129
Addition, computer, 106
Address, computer, 63
Advertising, use of computer, 180
AID, 183, 184
AIEE, 254
Aiken, 46
Air Force, 6, 132, 133, 151, 160, 182, 225
Airborne computer, 90, 154, 158, 162
AiResearch Mfg. Co., 69
Airline reservations, computer, 58, 183, 184
Algebra, Boolean, 8, 110, 119
Alpha rhythm, 126
Alphanumeric code, 104
American Premium Systems, Inc., 175
Analog computer, 21, 45, 72, 74, 80, 125, 203
direct, 76, 79
direct-current, 76
discrete, 80
indirect, 76, 79
mechanical differential analyzer, 76
scaling, 76
Analytical engine, 36, 37
AND gate, 112, 113, 117, 119
Antikythera computer, 25
Apollo computer, 182
space vehicle, 169
Applications, digital computer, 92
_A priori_ concept, 126, 135
APT computer, 209
Aquinas, St. Thomas, 235
Arabic numbers, 23
Archytas, 25
Arithmetic unit, computer, 51, 60
Aristotle, 26
Aristotelian logic, 109
_Arizona Journal_, 179
Army, U. S., 21, 78, 146, 259
_Ars Magna_, 28, 29
ARTOC, 157
Artron, 136
Ashby, W. Ross, 51, 124, 128, 251
ASC computer, 155
Associated Press computer system, 177
Asynchronous computer, 255
Athena computer, 52
Atlas missile, 4, 168
Atlas-Centaur missile, 169
Atomic Energy Commission, U. S., 149
Automatic
control, 80, 203
pilot, 203
Automation, 26, 80, 173, 181, 201, 202, 203, 211, 217
Automaton, 26
Auto-parking, use of computer, 178
Autonetics, 207
AUTOPROMPT computer, 210
AUTOTAG, 156
AutoTutor teaching machine, 213, 225
B-29, 45, 77, 82
Babbage, 5, 35, 37, 41, 51
Babylonian arithmetic, 23
Ballistic computer, 83
Banking, 1, 172, 173
Bar Association, American, 152, 249
Battelle Memorial Institute, 195
Batten, Barton, Durstine, & Osborn, 180
Bell Telephone Laboratories, 4, 147, 241
Bendix Corp., 182, 190, 218
Bendix G-15 computer, 183, 188
Bernal, J. D., 264
Bernstein, Alex, 141
Bettelheim, Bruno, 144
BIAX memory units, 10
Bierce, Ambrose, 43, 121
BINAC computer, 7, 47
Binary, 98
digit, 55, 104
notation, 101, 103
pure, 102, 104
system, 85, 97, 99
variables, 114
Bionics, 7, 132, 135, 255
BIRDIE, 259
Birds, counting, 18
Bit, 55, 104
“Black box” concept, 50, 115
BLADES system, 191
Block diagram, 58
BMEWS, 159
Boeing Airplane Co., 186
Boltzmann equation, 158
Bomarc missile, 186
_Book of Contemplation_, 27
Book of Knowledge, 6, 226
Boole, George, 38, 110
Boolean algebra, 38, 110, 119
Bradbury, Ray, 153, 257
_Brain_, 121
Brain
computer, 128, 129, 130
human, 87, 125, 128
BRAINIAC computer, 88, 117
Britton, Lionel, 121
Buffer
computer, 55
lexical, 238
Buildings, automation of, 217
Burack, Benjamin, 44
Bureau of Mines, U. S., 189
Bureau of Ships, U. S., 255
Burke, Edmund, 32
Burkhart, William, 45
Bush, Vannevar, 13, 45, 76
Business, computer in, 171
Business management, use of computer, 12, 143
Butler, Samuel, 32, 33, 121, 252, 268
CALCULO computer, 75
_Calculus Ratiocinator_, 109
Calendars as computers, 24
California Institute of Technology, 169
Cancer Society, American, 193
_Candide_, 30
Capek, Karel, 43, 121, 215
Caplin, Mortimer, 150
Carroll, Lewis, 38, 118
CDC 1604 computer, 165
Celanese Corp. of America, 207
Celestial simulator, 85
Census, 41
Census Bureau, U. S., 149
Chain circuit, 127
_Characteristica Universalis_, 109
Charactron tube, 66
Checkers (game), 8, 143
Checking, computer, 60
Checkout computer, 183
Chemical Corp., 249
Chess, 8, 9, 16, 35, 99, 142, 156
Circuit
chain, 127
delay-line, 63
flip-flop, 63, 115
molecular, 9, 253
printed, 62
reverberation, 128
Clapp, Verner, 248
Clarke, Arthur C., 265
CLASS teaching machine system, 226-228
Clock, 20, 24, 56, 85
COBOL language, 234
Code, computer
binary-coded decimal, 103, 106
binary-octal, 106
economy, 106
excess-3, 105, 114
“Gray,” 106
reflected binary, 106
self-checking, 105
Color computer, 4
_Commercial Art_, 175
Commission on Professional and Hospital Activity, 194
Communication, use of computers, 179