Early Computer Interface Design: Two Archival Documents John Harwood

Introduction

The documents transcribed herein represent two crucial moments Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/desi/article-pdf/31/2/41/1715398/desi_a_00321.pdf by guest on 27 September 2021 in the design of the computer. The first is a short memorandum— really more like a slightly formalized set of notes—written by the art and architecture critic Edgar Kaufmann, Jr. to Eliot Noyes in mid–1957. In 1956, Noyes had hired Kaufmann, along with Charles Eames, George Nelson, and Paul Rand, to aid him in the “IBM Design Consultancy”—a twenty-year campaign to redesign every aspect of IBM and develop for the corporation an autonomous means of designing and redesigning itself. Kaufmann’s notes detail his “impressions” and “hunches” regarding the design of computer interfaces,1 formed in part through his encounters with both the Noyes-designed IBM showroom for the IBM 702 and 705 computers, at the company’s Madison Avenue headquarters, and with the most recent line of computers produced by General Electric. As he noted in his cover to Noyes, the latter visit “served to confirm [his] ideas” regarding the shortcomings of IBM’s computers, whose interfaces were also designed by Noyes in collaboration with the industrial design firm Sundberg-Farrar and IBM’s own team of engineers. As I have detailed in my recent book The Interface,2 Kaufmann’s notes wholly transformed the approach that Noyes

1 Edgar Kaufmann, jr. to Eliot Noyes, 13 had taken towards redesigning IBM’s products. In true modern- June 13, 1957, Eliot Noyes Archive. The ist fashion, Noyes’s initial response to what he called IBM’s “design other memoranda reproduced here pro- schizophrenia” had been to “strip away” the mannered, cluttered viding the context for Kaufmann’s notes and inelegant surfaces of these complex machines.3 By opening are from the same string of correspon- up these opaque surfaces, he had aimed to reveal—and here his dence, running from February 26 to June language of revelation and overt Biblical reference is telling— 17, 1957, all attached to one another in the same file. the “coat of many colors” that was concealed within. Encased 2 John Harwood, The Interface: IBM and not in elaborate steel containers, but rather simple frameworks, the Transformation of Corporate Design, covered only by clear and sheer panes of glass, the computer’s 1945–1976 (Minneapolis: University of operators would be able, Noyes reasoned, to grasp the computer’s Minnesota Press, 2011), chap. 2. true essence. 3 Eliot Noyes, speech at Yale University, December 8. 1976, quoted in Gordon Bruce, Eliot Noyes: A Pioneer of Design and Architecture in the Age of American Modernism (London: Phaidon, 2006), 146. © 2015 Massachusetts Institute of Technology doi: 10.1162/DESI_a_00321 DesignIssues: Volume 31, Number 2 Spring 2015 41 Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/desi/article-pdf/31/2/41/1715398/desi_a_00321.pdf by guest on 27 September 2021

Figure 1 The most successful, but still problematic, design to emerge from IBM 305 RAMAC with 350 magnetic disk drive this modernist reform of the computer was IBM’s landmark unit, 1956. Courtesy of IBM Corporate RAMAC (Random-Access Memory Automatic Computer), of 1956 Archives, Somers, New York. (see Figure 1). The primary site of Noyes’s intervention in the design of the computer was the casing for the disk drive, a rotating drum of magnetic disks that allowed the machine to quickly access and rewrite stored programs. The rest of the computer’s input/out- put (I/O) devices, for technical reasons with which Noyes had yet fully to grasp, remained more or less the same as they had in ear- lier IBM models. Noyes’s design for the RAMAC earned it high praise (and a medal) from the industrial design press at the time; yet computer engineers and operators noted that the noble rhetoric of revelation that motivated the design had hardly improved matters. Not only did the machine resemble a rather over-complicated “jukebox”; 4 it also functioned merely as a symbolic gesture. The whirring drum, while dramatic, was more a distraction to the machine’s operators than anything else. Enter—at precisely the right time—Kaufmann. Writing just as IBM was preparing to sink its entire net worth into the radi- cal project of designing an inter-machine compatible “system” of computers, known as Project SPREAD and later, as System/360 4 This accusation is related in Franklin M. (1964–; see Figure 2), Kaufmann pointed out the wrong-headed- Fisher, James W. McKie and Richard B. ness of Noyes’s approach while also offering tantalizing clues as to Mancke, IBM and the US Data Process- the proper way forward. ing Industry: An Economic History (New York: Praeger, 1983), 36.

42 DesignIssues: Volume 31, Number 2 Spring 2015 Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/desi/article-pdf/31/2/41/1715398/desi_a_00321.pdf by guest on 27 September 2021

Figure 2 A simple compare-and-contrast exercise between images of Eliot Noyes and Associates and IBM, IBM’s computers before and after Kaufmann’s memo should System/360 Model 40, 1964. View of typical suffice to convince the reader of the importance of many of his installation. Courtesy of IBM Corporate more direct observations in the memo; however, one observation Archives, Somers, New York. in particular deserves a bit of explanation for the reader encoun- tering these ideas for the first time. In “Hunch C,” Kaufmann refers to two key concepts in the industrial design of the computer: the “‘grandfather’s gold watch’ technique” and the “‘parlor-coal cellar’ division.” These two concepts represent two sides of a historical trans- formation in computer design. With the former metaphor, Kaufmann was describing the fundamental structural and spatial nature of computing that had prevailed from the time of the com- puter’s invention just before and during World War II. These early machines, which demanded nearly constant access to mechanical and electrical components, were designed like a fob watch. A cover (a specially designed room with climate control, air filtration, etc. that regulated electro-magnetic fluctuations) concealed a clock face (the I/O devices that offered up representations of the goings-on inside the machines and the means to control those goings-on), which in turn concealed the clock mechanism (the CPU and mem- ory). Noyes’s redesigns of the IBM computer may have made this arrangement slightly more pleasant—thus the “gold” watch, rather than one made of, say, brass—but stopped well short of a more aggressive rearticulation of the spatial aspects of the machine.

DesignIssues: Volume 31, Number 2 Spring 2015 43 The “parlor-coal cellar” metaphor to which Kaufmann refers was just such a rearticulation. Instead of nestling each component of the “architecture” of the computer one-inside-the- other, Kaufmann proposed rearranging these components in a manner akin to the separation of servant and served spaces in a house. The components of the computer that required them for reasons of safety and cognitive ergonomics to be separated from the space of the computer operators, and whose function and meaning would only be legible to highly specialized engineers— these could be buried away in the “coal cellar.” This would open up the space of the parlor—the space of the operators—to greater possibilities of design: the “drama” to which Kaufmann so

rightly refers. Although the ergonomic redesign of the parlor Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/desi/article-pdf/31/2/41/1715398/desi_a_00321.pdf by guest on 27 September 2021 would still be governed by stringent technical and perceptual con- straints, Kaufmann’s domestic metaphor opened the era of com- puter interface design in earnest, and well before the advent of the graphic interfaces designed by Ivan Sutherland et al. Its impact upon Noyes and IBM Design Consultancy was immediate, and eventually the parlor and coal cellar concept became the driving force behind the design of System/360, with its apparatus of “wall” and “module” units. The second document is also a memorandum, sent by the young IBM ergonomist Serge Boutourline, Jr. to his highest boss, IBM director of research Robert S. Lee, in 1964.5 Written at an astonishingly early date, well before the burning of punch cards on college campuses or the fiery speeches of Noam Chomsky or Ralph Nader decrying the excesses of bureaucratism and technoc- racy, Boutourline’s memo offers an unprecedented and exception- ally insightful view of the manifold and complex problems confronted by “user” and corporation alike as the computer trans- formed from a rarified piece of military, scientific and business equipment into a mass medium. Rather as Fred Turner’s recent book From Counterculture to Cyberculture has done in its impres- sively detailed account of the rise of the heady, pseudo-post-ideo- logical rhetoric of cybernetics and computer science,6 Boutourline’s memo traces the fault lines of an increasingly articulate infrastruc- ture of information and speculates, in terms that will be familiar to 5 Serge Boutourline Jr. to Robert S. Lee, any reader today, that the main problems of computation as a mass memorandum, Re: “IBM’s business rela- media are not technical, but rhetorical and political. tions with non-specialist computer Lee forwarded the memo to Charles Eames, who made users,” November 24, 1964 [forwarded by Lee to Charles Eames, July 20, 1965], Box extensive use of Boutourline’s observations in the Eames Office’s 146, Folder 8, “General correspondence, single largest project—a 10-year campaign to design an “IBM 1964–1970, n.d.,” Charles and Ray Museum” alongside its new corporate headquarters in Armonk, Eames Collection, Library of Congress. NY. While Eames acknowledged the difficulties that were raised 6 See Fred Turner, From Counterculture to in Boutourline’s memo both in his design of the project and in Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole many public lectures throughout the 1960s, he also implicitly Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism (Chicago and London: Univer- attacked the young scientist’s excessively innocent suggestions sity of Chicago Press, 2008). about how to respond. Rather than worry that the corporation’s

44 DesignIssues: Volume 31, Number 2 Spring 2015 (and, by extension, the designer’s) problem was to convince the “public” that IBM had its best interests at heart, Eames suggested that IBM instead engage in a multi-media propaganda barrage that would at once soothe people’s fear of the computer through an enforced intimacy that would naturalize the new device as little more than a convenient tool and convince the public that the computer was a wholly revolutionary technology that would com- pletely redefine the modern world as if by magic.7

* * * * Boutourline memo transcription

FROM: Serge Boutourline, Jr. Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/desi/article-pdf/31/2/41/1715398/desi_a_00321.pdf by guest on 27 September 2021

TO: Dr. Robert S. Lee

DATE: November 24, 1964

RE: IBM’s Business Relationship with Non-Specialist Computer Users

Summary This memo develops some action implications for IBM if two assumptions are made about the non-specialist computer user: 1) The non-specialist computer user will soon be an important buying influence in most user organizations and may eventually be a major buying factor in many user organizations. 2) The non-specialist computer user will expect and want IBM to have a responsibility to him personally, regard- less of mediating agents between IBM and this user. This responsibility is likely to be qualitatively different than IBM now has to its present customer contacts.

Based on these assumptions, the memo develops in more detail three main conclusions: 1) IBM must evolve a new sales relationship with non-spe- cialist computer users. 2) IBM could profitably develop an “individual-centered” identity with the non-specialist user group. 3) Action plans and clear IBM policies based on analysis of critical factors in the new business situation must back up communications programs.

7 Charles Eames, “Robin—Draft 3/1,” The major action recommendation of this memo is that the [1966] Box 146, Folder 12, “Notes, assumptions of this memo be evaluated by developing some ‘Notion writing,’ 1966, n.d.,” Charles and Ray Eames Collection, Library explicit measures of the “importance to IBM” of non-specialist of Congress. computer users (for this and future years). If these non-specialists

DesignIssues: Volume 31, Number 2 Spring 2015 45 have important business value to IBM, then the memo can suggest an analytical framework for future program development. * * * *

The New User Group This memo assumes that IBM will be successful in broadening the number of users of present systems and that these users will not become computer experts but will simply use computer services in their everyday work schedules. This memo does not assume wide implementation of on-line computation terminals, information retrieval devices, or computer teaching machine applications. The commercial development of

these applications would, I think, considerably strengthen the Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/desi/article-pdf/31/2/41/1715398/desi_a_00321.pdf by guest on 27 September 2021 position taken in the memo and references have been made to these applications. But the memo’s conclusions do not depend on the commercial development of any of these future applications and are framed within the context of present equipment and pres- ent computer access modes. The new user group, then, is distinguished by its size, its casual contact with computer services, its non-expertness on com- puter matters, and perhaps by the diversity of functions which computer services play in individual work activities.

The New Business Environment IBM has always had an interest and concern for the efficiency and well-being of individual users of its equipment and equipment ser- vices. While such users have infrequently, if ever, paid the rental bills themselves, IBM always realized that if these users found their use-patterns unpleasant or inefficient eventually the client companies would be affected and IBM’s business would suffer. What characteristics of the non-specialist computer user suggest that IBM needs to establish a new business relationship with him?

Large Potential Size of Non-Specialist User Group More than anything, it is the large potential numbers of non-spe- cialist computer users which makes me think that a new business relationship must be developed by IBM. You can’t deal with a mil- lion people in the same way that you deal with ten thousand. Some of the confidence that a small number of individuals in a computer-using firm placed on getting service from an IBM employee whom they know personally, must be substituted by the belief of a larger number of people that they will get service from a man whom they have never met before and never may meet again. The kind of dealing with concrete individual executive worries that used to be achievable by each individual salesman must now be handled more explicitly and publically in communications to broader user groups.

46 DesignIssues: Volume 31, Number 2 Spring 2015 Even feedback about customer attitudes, problems, and expectations of IBM that could be previously gotten from sales- man’s reports must now be more carefully and explicitly gleaned from analysis of user group studies. Lastly, even the sales pitch is less deliverable by the individ- ual salesman when a large audience of users is the potential buyer. Again, a kind of indeterminacy creeps into the picture as the num- ber of people increases and direct contact between the personnel and buyers decreases. What seems to happen when the number of people to be dealt with in a system goes up is that the informality and multiple- meanings of person-to-person give-and-take must be replaced by

more careful analysis of features critical for many individuals in Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/desi/article-pdf/31/2/41/1715398/desi_a_00321.pdf by guest on 27 September 2021 the audience and by more formal action plans designed to effi- ciently deal with such features. Feedback from the audience, must, likewise, often become more precise in order to be useful. But these are general speculations on what happens when a number of people dealt [sic] with increases. The important point is that the number of non-specialist computer users is likely to rise substan- tially in IBM computer installations and that dealing with this group is likely to require changes of technique which is attribut- able solely to the increased number of people.

Diversity of Use Requirements Each individual non-specialist user can be expected to have a work situation that in some ways will be unique to him or her. Perhaps it will be the use to which they put computers that will make their relationship to computer services personalized. Perhaps it will be the fact that they require very fast service or that they use particu- lar kinds of programs or have a particular kind of data. Perhaps it will be that the nature of their use of computer services will vary so much over time or that they themselves will have to develop and adapt procedures to maximize the payoff of computer services in their work situation. Perhaps it will be some unexpected work pressure or personal need which will cause them to put some spe- cial demands on computer services. Thus while most of the time one person may have routine and predictable requirements in most respects, it is also very likely that every user will in every case have some unique require- ments in a few respects. The number of unusual demands and the range of types of demand on computer systems is likely to increase as the number of users, their use-frequency, the number of use- applications, and the non-specialist character of the user popula- tion increases. The significance of this for IBM is that the criteria which makes up the term “adequate service” are likely to become much more diverse and hence operationally more indeterminate. IBM will be less in a position to rationally say that their equipment gives

DesignIssues: Volume 31, Number 2 Spring 2015 47 “better” service for “service” will begin taking on a multiplicity of individual, time-defined and situation-defined meanings. Within this context it seems to me that IBM must create new sales and service-performance procedures and credibilities that have a gen- eral utility within a multiplicity of such individual situations.

Non-Specialist Character of User Concepts Who takes the “blame” if something goes wrong in a particular use-interaction? If common experience is to be a guide for answer- ing this question, we might conclude that the more personally and (in a temporal sense) immediately involved a person tends to be, the more he tends to blame something or someone else for his

troubles. This is not to discredit rational people as becoming com- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/desi/article-pdf/31/2/41/1715398/desi_a_00321.pdf by guest on 27 September 2021 pletely irrational but simply to say that one wants the outside world to be different than it is in some critical respect when one is stuck, let’s say, in heavy automobile traffic. It could have been your fault that you decided to travel at that time but you see the problem differently. You know that you had to go to a certain place at a cer- tain time and could not have left sooner or taken another road. Under these circumstances a highway engineer’s claim that the “road is adequate” is not only false for you (given your needs now) but is liable to be taken as a statement that as far as he is concerned the service you are getting is O.K. by him (implying either that he doesn’t like you or that he thinks other people at other times are more important or, worse still, that no reasonable person would have gotten into the type of need situation you are trying to satisfy). But the degree of personal immediate involvement is not the whole story. We know that the highway engineer traveling the same road at the same time with the same need situation would react somewhat differently than a non-highway engineer. He might be just as desirous of the outside world changing (even though here too, it was his “fault” that he chose to travel at this time and in this way) but he will tend to spread the blame. It will be the interchange designers who were at fault and perhaps the traffic control system or even the drivers themselves and the manufacturers of the cars they are driving. The non-highway engineer on the other hand will blame “New York City,” “Los Angeles” or some other large agency that presumably has overall responsibility affecting most of the factors which the user feels are affecting this situation at this time. And because the non-spe- cialist does not realize how little of the situation is able to be changed by such agencies (given the restraints on them and given the few number of the factors in the present situation which they in any way control) he tends to place more blame on such agencies than the highway engineer for he assigns them far more control over the situation than they actually have.

48 DesignIssues: Volume 31, Number 2 Spring 2015 Yet even this is not the whole situation, for there is both the highway engineer and the non-highway engineer who have little, if any, discretion in the way they drive which will seriously affect that overall situation (that they are on this road at this time with this destination and this time schedule). It doesn’t matter much if they go bumper-to-bumper or if they make a fast pickup at the lights; they won’t get there much faster. Their situation cannot be affected by their actions at that time. Yet the highway engineer, in understanding the discretions which were available to him and the great constraints which make it unlikely that one agency is respon- sible for this situation is more likely to start focusing on himself as the cause of the blame. He will see that the person with the most

discretion in the situation he is in was himself, and in this case will Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/desi/article-pdf/31/2/41/1715398/desi_a_00321.pdf by guest on 27 September 2021 start thinking about how he could prevent this kind of scheduling mistake again. The non-highway engineer on the other hand not only blames the “city” as the major cause of his difficulty but will tend to do so especially when the number of choices increases beyond his ability to rationally decide among them. “A poor work- man blames his tools” applies to the person who for one reason or another must forever remain without sufficient knowledge about how things work or fail to work. It is the mark of a person who is, or has decided to, forever be an outsider to some causal process. The significance of the above for IBM is simply this: The new non-specialist users are amateurs, their number of specific requirements is likely to both be great in number and somewhat unpredictable in and at any particular time, and the ‘causality’ for a deficiency in service to a particular individual is likely to be very complex (including, as it does, various mediating agents between the user and the machine, the work load on the system, etc.). Clearly this is a situation where it is probable, if not inevitable, that IBM will be “blamed” for various service deficiencies by non-spe- cialist users. Clearly this is also a situation where many such users cannot be expected to know when the possible use patterns increase in number and keep changing. Clearly it is in IBM’s inter- est to develop ways of minimizing blame put on IBM in situations where their ability to directly and personally handle the user’s problems is limited. The new business relationship, then, is characterized by a user situation where IBM is more vulnerable to blame for problems with much less access to problem situation than they now have and often less control over the cause of difficulties encountered. Each user is less important to IBM in terms of dollars of computer time sold and less accessible to IBM as an individual, but a group of such users can utilize a major portion of a computer’s time. Even more important is the likelihood that the ratio of dollars of com- puter time used by each user to the dollar value of in-company activities affected by the use-experience with the computer system

DesignIssues: Volume 31, Number 2 Spring 2015 49 is likely to increase greatly. The smaller the average use-interac- tion, the more frequent it is, and the more important each use- interaction becomes for each user, the greater this ratio is likely to be. This ratio is not important to IBM directly, but it likely to be important to top management for it means that any difficulty (for whatever reason) encountered by users in the computer-use inter- action has, in aggregate, an important economic significance for their firm. Such top management concern is likely to be justified even when the number of non-specialist users is still small, for such initial users are likely to hold more important positions in their organizations. From IBM’s point of view the experience of such early users with their equipment is doubly important for their

attitudes towards the broader use of the computer as a tool in Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/desi/article-pdf/31/2/41/1715398/desi_a_00321.pdf by guest on 27 September 2021 everyday work situations is likely to be an important influence on the attitudes of other non-specialists regarding the usefulness of computer services (particularly IBM’s computer services) in non- specialist work settings.

A More “Individual-Centered” Business Identity for IBM There are many specific problems to be solved before IBM can develop methods to efficiently deal with central aspects of the new business relationship here described. This section will simply sketch out specifications for a kind of relationship that non-spe- cialist users might credibly develop with IBM, within which IBM’s interests might be maintained within the new use-situation. The central credibility which IBM must establish with the new user group is that IBM in principle cares about the individual user. This is likely to be as important to the business executive who sees employees using computer services (and occasionally getting into difficulties) as it is for individual users. By establishing the principle that IBM cares for the individual user, it tends to make peo- ple more willing to consider mediating factors affecting computer services such as programmers and schedulers as well as the possi- bility that some of the fault may lie in the user’s own actions. But the function of the establishment of the belief that IBM cares, in principle, for the individual has a much deeper function than simply helping to shift the burden of blame for difficulties when they arise. Users must believe that if they (for any reason), have difficulties, they have someone to go to. This may not only be important for users, but also can help IBM quickly and inexpen- sively get feedback on system difficulties, regardless of the cause of these difficulties. But a general belief that IBM cares for the individual user is not likely to be established without fairly convincing proof. It is my suggestion that IBM develop a line of argument which demon- strates that, in fact, its business depends today in large part on good individual user experiences, and that many things in IBM’s

50 DesignIssues: Volume 31, Number 2 Spring 2015 future point to the same conclusion. This kind of demonstration, it seems to me, is absolutely necessary because of IBM’s present association with large-scale devices where no single human is ben- efited very directly by the operation of the device and no human is required as part of the direct operation of the device itself. The new users will want to have some kind of answer on the question: “How important am I to IBM?” that will stick in many special and private situations. Part of this answer must include some assessment of IBM’s attitude towards the concept of individualism. It would seem to me that many computer-access devices now under development demonstrate that IBM, more than any

other large American company, has more to gain from an increase Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/desi/article-pdf/31/2/41/1715398/desi_a_00321.pdf by guest on 27 September 2021 (and certainly not from a decrease) of individually controlled and differentiated activities than anyone else. IBM’s unequivocal demonstration of this vested future interest might help develop today’s business relationship with a broader audience of non-spe- cialist users.

Action Implications for IBM The following five sections discuss some general action areas relat- ing to the problems discussed in this memo.

Evaluate the Business Importance of the Non-Specialist User to IBM The foregoing memo depends upon a subjective assessment that the new user groups will be important to IBM in some important ways. Yet the problems involved in developing a new relationship to these users is likely to be so new to IBM and involve such a dif- fuse set of audiences and problems that anything but a major effort to clearly establish a new IBM relationship with these users is not likely to be successful. From this point of view I would suggest that only when estimates are developed of the dollar importance of these users to IBM (Now, and for perhaps five years in the future) that the kind of planned effort I anticipate will be necessary can get adequate support. By the same token, more realistic assessments of the time pressures and schedule of dollar investments appropriate for working on this problem can be developed only if a dollar value of the problem’s solution is estimated.

The Need for Integrated Plans Covering All Audience Segments As the number of different user situations develop at the opera- tional level, it seems to me that corporate actions must work hard- er to make sure that the kinds of policies and actions it takes have the maximal dollar value to IBM at the concrete operational level where sales and profits are made. Moreover, as the number of users multiply, it is likely that IBM will have to make sure that

DesignIssues: Volume 31, Number 2 Spring 2015 51 conflicts among its many interests are resolved so that they maxi- mize IBM’s interests at this operational level. This suggests the new situation might require consideration of new patterns of horizontal as well as vertical coordination of corporate action.

More Specific Relevance of Corporate Communications Activities to Operational Problems When the broad public takes on a business value to IBM (as it may if non-specialist computer users become important to IBM) then it seems that Corporate Communications has a role to play in helping IBM at the operational sales level. This suggests, again, that Corporate Communications could profitably consider

new patterns of vertical as well as horizontal integration of com- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/desi/article-pdf/31/2/41/1715398/desi_a_00321.pdf by guest on 27 September 2021 munications actions.

Study of Non-Specialist User Experiences with Computer Services Two studies of user experiences with computer services are sug- gested: 1) A broader group of part-time users is now being exposed to computer services as part of their jobs. How are these audiences reacting to computers? What do they tell their families and friends about computers and about IBM? How important are these people in shaping more general public reactions to computer technology in general and to IBM specifically? What kind of attitudes seem most damaging to increased usage of computers by non-specialists once they first get involved? What kind of attitudes seem most to inhibit the establishment or initial contact with computers? Corporate Communications has interests and activities which relate directly to these issues, though detailed answers to these questions are really marketing research questions. 2) Similarly to the extent that on-line terminals in publically visible locations are expected by IBM to be a commercial reality in the near future, it would be valuable for IBM to answer a set of questions similar to those in section 1.

Corporate Communications here again seems to have a natural need to know and anticipate some aspects of user experiences with these terminals, for such applications are likely to multiply by many times the number of people who come into daily contact with IBM’s equipment. On the other hand, such advance knowl- edge could be beneficial to both division and corporate manage- ment in action and policy decision-making.

52 DesignIssues: Volume 31, Number 2 Spring 2015 Legal and Moral Problems of Man-Computer Relationship It seems to me that at the heart of IBM’s credibility as a responsible agent who cares about the individual user is the extent to which IBM understands the real relationship the user wants to have and could have in the use relationship. It seems to me that such under- standing can be very useful in formulating company policy, in developing products, and in developing effective communications. In a like manner, it seems that a superficial understanding of the user’s relationship to the computer is most likely to be reflected in communications and other broad corporate activities, thus damag- ing what I feel must be an unquestioned IBM credibility (that it really cares for the individual user’s well-being).

An understanding of the legal and moral issues in the man- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/desi/article-pdf/31/2/41/1715398/desi_a_00321.pdf by guest on 27 September 2021 computer relationship is one important aspect of the user’s situa- tion, and one where an early analysis by IBM could take on both historic and great business significance. Bell Telephone’s early insistence on the individual’s rights of privacy was, in my opinion, only one reflection of their broader understanding of what the tele- phone would have to become in people’s lives if it were really to be widely accepted. It is my hypothesis that such an understanding about what the computer will have to become in future user’s lives is now necessary if IBM is to maintain its position as a leader in the field of data processing. For only then can IBM know the general kind of company it will have to become to successfully deal (and be recognized as trustworthy) in the broader public domain. Whether or not IBM in the future deals directly with the public or does so through intermediaries I think it immaterial to the issue, for it will have to understand the new business climate as well, if not better, than its business associates if it is to be successful. What then, are some of these legal and moral issues? Most of them have been raised in some form or another in respect to the on-line mode, and are easier to discuss within this context. The first issue raised has been that of individual privacy. Present PROJECT MAC terminals at MIT require each user to type in a secret code before the computer recognized them or will give them certain memory readout. Must assurances be given, in principle, that user usage patterns be not made available to any outsider? How does one define “usage patterns” and “outsider”? What precautions would constitute sufficient precautions by IBM? What knowledge would be rightly considered sufficient knowledge by IBM for others to believe that an act was done with their knowledge and implicit consent? What restraints by IBM might be feasible in undesirable applications situations? How might one classify a violation of “privacy” in the case of on- line computation?

DesignIssues: Volume 31, Number 2 Spring 2015 53 In the case of teaching machines, another point is likely to be raised in regards to privacy. It is clear that something can now be known about a student based on his behavior on the terminal, and this information is very easy to store and analyze because it is already in digital form. Should such information be available to a student’s teachers? We say, offhand, “yes,” but let us add another aspect to the situation. Let us say that very intimate infor- mation about the student—of the sort that is gotten from an analy- sis of psychological tests and depth interviews—could be developed from such behavioral data. Are we still sure that the computer-stored and analyzed information should be available to the student’s teachers? Is there a responsibility on the part of the

institution to inform the student that such analysis is being made Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/desi/article-pdf/31/2/41/1715398/desi_a_00321.pdf by guest on 27 September 2021 of him? There are other issues, but one more is worth mention- ing, that of “deception of the individual” at a terminal. Should an information retrieval device inform an individual that the infor- mation available to him is being modified based on the questions he asks? Should a patient in a mental hospital be told that he is “talking” (via a typewriter terminal) to a computer program (this is already being talked about; a year’s testing of a dialog program has been complete as part of a computer language development project at MIT)? These are not, in my view, imaginary problems for they do not depend on futuristic applications, technical feasibilities, and do not, I think, anticipate public questions unreasonably. Nor are these questions not IBM relevant, for IBM’s under- standing of these real problems could help it take very sound and eventually IBM-beneficial positions on these issues as they develop. Most importantly, I do not believe that, if one accepts public and private development of these issues, that IBM can deal with these issues on the broad claim that they are a responsible company. If and when these issues are raised, those who raise them will test IBM’s responsibility by finding out how much IBM has seriously analyzed them. It is in the interest of developing this credibility, as at least a minimum goal, that I would suggest seri- ous analysis and investigation of the above issues. From a more progressive point of view, I would hope that the understanding of these issues could help IBM develop clear policies that would “hit the nail on the head” for all to see, thereby showing it was ready for the responsible handling of its important new business relationships. It is my firm belief that the key to IBM’s new busi- ness relationships lies in IBM’s ability to claim that they are more responsible and more competent in handling the full range of new- generation computer problems. It seems to me that a full investiga- tion of the moral and legal problems of man-machine computer usage could begin building an IBM competence in this important aspect of the new computer environment.

54 DesignIssues: Volume 31, Number 2 Spring 2015 Figure 3 Memo of Noyes to Kaufman (February 26, 1957). Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/desi/article-pdf/31/2/41/1715398/desi_a_00321.pdf by guest on 27 September 2021

Figure 4 Memo of Noyes to Kaufman (March 5, 1957).

DesignIssues: Volume 31, Number 2 Spring 2015 55 Figure 5 Memo of Kaufman to Noyes (March 18, 1957). Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/desi/article-pdf/31/2/41/1715398/desi_a_00321.pdf by guest on 27 September 2021

Figure 6 Memo of Kaufman to Noyes (June 13, 1957).

56 DesignIssues: Volume 31, Number 2 Spring 2015 Figure 7 Memo of Noyes to Kaufman (June 17, 1957). Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/desi/article-pdf/31/2/41/1715398/desi_a_00321.pdf by guest on 27 September 2021

DesignIssues: Volume 31, Number 2 Spring 2015 57 Figures 8 and 9 Two columns of impressions and hunches. Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/desi/article-pdf/31/2/41/1715398/desi_a_00321.pdf by guest on 27 September 2021

58 DesignIssues: Volume 31, Number 2 Spring 2015