[SIGCIS-Members] Housing @ SHOT

Thu Oct 1 17:11:03 PDT 2009

Say, if anyone in SIG-CIS is interested in sharing a room to reduce the
costs of attending SHOT, feel free to let me know. I'll be happy to match
folks. (Please indicate what dates you will be staying / already have a room
booked for.)

Best wishes,

- Atsushi

=====================================
Atsushi Akera
Associate Professor, Department of Science and Technology Studies
Director, First Year Studies Program--Sage 5206
Rensselaer Polytechnic institute
110 8th Street
Troy, NY 12180  USA
ph: 518.279.9708/fx:518.276-2659/e:akeraa at rpi.edu /w:
http://www.rpi.edu/~akeraa

-----Original Message-----
From: members-bounces at sigcis.org [mailto:members-bounces at sigcis.org] On
Behalf Of Medina, Eden
Sent: Friday, July 17, 2009 1:38 PM
To: members at sigcis.org
Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] computers and management science

I knew this was the right group to ask.  

I too agree with the comments being made and thank everyone for their
thoughts on how best to address the claim.  Additional responses can be sent
to me off list unless their is extensive interest in this topic.  To bring
some closure to the topic I may have found a very easy way to address Beer's
statement.  It seems that the Pegasus machine he referred to was split
between United Steel and Sheffield University, thus throwing into doubt
claims that it was entirely dedicated to management science. 

Again, thanks for the help. 

Eden

________________________________________
From: Joel West [joelwest at ieee.org]
Sent: Friday, July 17, 2009 1:17 PM
To: Medina, Eden; members at sigcis.org
Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] computers and management science

Dear Eden,

I share many of Gerard's concerns about the unmeasurability of such claims
and even how dubious making them might be. (I also agree with Tom that
"management science" is too vague -- does he possibly mean operations
research?)

However, as a positivist (are there any others on this list?) I am inclined
to take the claim at face value and see what they might mean.

So while "first" is likely unprovable, I do think it would be interesting to
say "most computers were bought to do payroll or missile trajectories and
this one was bought to do management science." I suspect it would be
relatively easy to document the "typical" motivation or application for
computers in the era, even if the actual use (post hoc) is not easily
measured. (Ideally, you'd want a list of who had login accounts, and if
necessary assume each used their account proportionately).

But in some ways, the inputs question is less interesting than the outputs
question. If Beer was the first boy in the invisible college of his
discipline to have a new toy, what did he do with it? Is there any evidence
that this strategic foresight (or dumb luck) enabled him to advance his
field in ways that his less-endowed rivals could not?

I would find it terribly interesting if Beer has the best computing power
but the major advances in numerical approaches to management science were
being made elsewhere. IIRC, the field's major scientific prize (originally
from ORSA, now INFORMS) is named after a mathematician who made his most
important contributions before these sorts of computers existed.

Joel

On 6:25 PM +0200 7/17/09, Alberts, G. hath said:
>What in heaven would be the purport of such claim? Computers were not only
expensive, they involved major investments, certainly machines the size of
Pegasus. Hence, the legitimation for making such investment was seldomly
based on the single use for one field of application, or rather for one
department in an enterprise or university. Historians usually can trace the
considerations leading to the actual purchase in the company archives. Also
one may be able to guess where (in which subdepartment) the first initiative
to such deep investment in modernizing business originated.
>How the machine was in fact used, once installed, is much harder to
reconstruct. Did the administrative support staff actually get to use the
computer or were they pushed out by the scientific computers from the
laboratory departments. Were management scientists favored before the
statisticians and the down to earth daily bookkeeping? In the incidental
case where a logbook is preserved, or where a very early computing center
kept statistics, one may be able to tell something about who was using the
machine.
>So, what could be the meaning of "dedicated to"? Was that "dedicated" on
the level of legitimation of the purchase, or was it "dedicated" in terms of
seconds and minutes of use of the system? Let alone that we could judge the
claim of "entirely" or even "first".
>
>Rather, to us historians being aware of inclusion and exclusion mechanisms
around the use of computers, simply power struggles if you will, the claim
of "dedicated entirely" made in a first person account has a clear intent.
Other users, other interested parties, were succesfully made invisible, at
least in the account of the "management science" department. Probably
bookkkeeping use didnot count, or was counted under management science in
the first place, etcetera.
>
>Rather than investigating the claim, my suggestion would be to investigate
the fact that such claim was made, when and by whom.

On 11:11 AM -0400 7/17/09, Medina, Eden wrote:
>I am hoping that your collective wisdom might help me check out a claim.
The British cybernetician Stafford Beer claims that the Ferranti Pegasus 1
machine he bought in 1956 was the only computer at that time dedicated
entirely to applications in management science.  Do you know of any other
examples of computers fully dedicated to management science applications
during this time period?

--
Joel West, Ph.D.          http://www.JoelWest.org/
Professor, Innovation & Entrepreneurship
College of Business, San Jose State University
BT 555, One Washington Square, San Jose, CA 95192-0070
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