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Computer Science and the Organization of White-Collar Work, 1945-1975

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Computer Science and the Organization of White-Collar Work, 1945-1975 Post-Industrial Engineering: Computer Science and the Organization of White-Collar Work, 1945-1975 by Andrew Benedict Mamo A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Cathryn Carson, Chair Professor David Hollinger Professor David Winickoff Spring 2011 Post-Industrial Engineering: Computer Science and the Organization of White-Collar Work, 1945-1975 © 2011 by Andrew Benedict Mamo Abstract Post-Industrial Engineering: Computer Science and the Organization of White-Collar Work, 1945-1975 by Andrew Benedict Mamo Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Berkeley Professor Cathryn Carson, Chair The development of computing after the Second World War involved a fundamental reassessment of information, communication, knowledge — and work. No merely technical project, it was prompted in part by the challenges of industrial automation and the shift toward white-collar work in mid-century America. This dissertation therefore seeks out the connections between technical research projects and organization-theory analyses of industrial management in the Cold War years. Rather than positing either a model of technological determinism or one of social construction, it gives a more nuanced description by treating the dynamics as one of constant social and technological co-evolution. This dissertation charts the historical development of what it has meant to work with computers by examining the deep connections between technologists and mid-century organization theorists from the height of managerialism in the 1940s through the decline of the “liberal consensus” in the 1970s. Computing was enmeshed in ongoing debates concerning automation and the relationship between human labor and that of machines. The work that would become known as “artificial intelligence” grew out of studies of mental work in an attempt to automate the process of making routine decisions within large organizations. Likewise, the technical content of operating systems and programs reinforced ideas about what constituted meaningful labor, even as they created a new basis for assessing the value of mental work. The development of these technologies occurred in a direct relationship with ongoing conversations about American economic development in the 1950s and 1960s. By the mid-1960s, large computer systems were viewed through the prism of the Great Society, while smaller minicomputers were associated with a libertarian backlash. The direct experiences of working with different machines provided a foundation for rethinking the organization of the American office and the place of mental work within an “Information Age.” 1 Contents Acknowledgments................................................................................................................................ ii Introduction............................................................................................................................................v Part I ..........................................................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: Management Science and Administrative Machinery ...................................................2 Chapter 2: The Logic of the Office............................................................................................................46 Part II......................................................................................................................................................89 Chapter 3: Interacting with Machines....................................................................................................90 Chapter 4: Plans and the Structure of Society.................................................................................. 125 Part III ................................................................................................................................................. 156 Chapter 5: Calculating Society, Computing Community ............................................................... 157 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 192 Bibliography ..................................................................................................................................... 199 i Acknowledgments This dissertation has benefitted from the input of far more people than I can hope to acknowledge. Cathryn Carson has been principally responsible for helping this project grow from a vague interest in Cold War history of technology into the document that rests before you now. She has asked the tough questions and has forced me to clarify and sharpen the arguments of this work. One could hardly ask for a better mentor. And yet this hardly exhausts my debt to the community within the history department of the University of California, Berkeley. David Hollinger has also provided critical feedback on this project, particularly during its earliest stages as a seminar paper. Kathleen Frydl has encouraged me to connect the Cold War science patronage system to the main strands of American politics, and gave me an early lesson in the right way to do archival research in the face of unforeseen obstacles. Jack Lesch provided me with opportunities to study the histories of real organic brains in addition to those of giant electronic ones. David Winickoff’s support for developing this as a contribution to STS has also shaped the form and direction of this work. The research and writing for this dissertation have been made possible by several grants and fellowships. The Edward Teller Fellowship in Science and National Security Studies at the Department of Energy’s Office of History and Heritage Resources provided an opportunity to conduct focused research and writing in Washington, D.C., while also giving me a valuable education in the practices of bureaucracies. My thanks go to Department of Energy Historian Skip Gosling for that opportunity and for advice on the historical profession. A Dissertation Improvement Grant from the National Science Foundation supported a series of oral history interviews that deeply enriched this work. Additional support for this dissertation from the University of California, Berkeley came from the Office for the History of Science and Technology, the Department of History, and the Graduate Division. I have been incredibly fortunate to have had the best administrators at Berkeley standing behind me: Diana Wear in the Office for History of Science and Technology and Mabel Lee in the History Department. Their expertise into the workings of this institution have helped me in more ways than I can count. I am very grateful for the constant help from archivists at MIT, the Library of Congress, the National Archives and Records Administration, and the Charles Babbage Institute. Special thanks go to Nora Murphy and Silvia Mejia at the MIT Archives and Special Collections and Arvid Nelson and Stephanie Crowe at the Charles Babbage Institute. The scientists who allowed me to interview them have contributed vitally to this dissertation. I must thank Russell Ackoff, Fernando Corbató, Hubert Dreyfus, Robert Fano, Edward Feigenbaum, Martin Greenberger, and Lotfi Zadeh. Parts of this dissertation have been presented at academic conferences, including the University of Pennsylvania Graduate Humanities Forum, MEPHISTOS at the University of Texas, Austin, the History of Science Society, and the Society for the History of Technology. I have received thoughtful comments from participants at these conferences that have substantially strengthened my work. The entire arc of this dissertation has been shaped, from beginning to end, by fellow students in the Berkeley History Department and elsewhere. At various stages along the way, ii Anna Armentrout, Ellen Bales, Eliah Bures, Tom Burnett, Charlotte Cowden, Susan Groppi, Daniel Immerwahr, Karin Isaacson, Matt Sargent, James Skee, Nu-Anh Tran, Teddy Varno, Alex Wellerstein, Jeff Wolf, and Stephanie Young, among many others, all left an imprint. The existence of this dissertation owes immeasurably to their support. Finally, I must acknowledge the assistance of those closest to me, who have put up with this dissertation at its every twist and turn. My parents, David and Laurie Mamo, have never wavered in their support, nor have my sisters, Alex and Elizabeth. Lan Li has been a constant source of inspiration for the last several years. Their support has made it possible to write this dissertation. Its completion owes everything to them. iii Introduction Introduction We have many histories of computers but we have no histories of the information age. A history of the information age should be one in which information technologies matter in terms of how they are embedded within larger social dynamics. While our many histories of computing are increasingly sophisticated—examining both hardware and software, following users and designers, exploring gender, race, and class, and so on—these histories still, curiously, almost all treat computers as discrete objects, with easily identifiable users, solving certain well-defined problems. While this may have been true in the age of the personal computer, it has not always been true nor will it always necessarily be so.1 It is as though our histories of technology
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