[SIGCIS-Members] Diagrammatic models of human computing

[Willard McCarty]

I'd be most grateful for pointers to very early flowcharting under any 
name -- esp. prior to Herman Goldstine and John von Neumann, who called 
flowcharts "flow diagrams", in "Planning and Coding of Problems for an 
Electronic Computing Instrument", Part II, Vol. I (1947). This document 
is available for download from the Institute for Advanced Study in 
Princeton. Martin Campbell-Kelly, in "From Theory to Practice: The 
Invention of Programming, 1947-51", p. 27, says that the term is 
"completely original" with Goldstine and von Neumann.

Another teasing question is what flowcharting, under any name, has to do 
with the phrase "think out of the box". Any clues?

Yours,
WM

On 18/04/2015 22:58, Bjorn Westergard wrote:
> There was some chatter about this during the Dearborn conference.
>
> I'm struggling to recall where, but I've seen some "flowcharts" for
> semi-automatic computation with single-operation IBM machines.
> Flowcharts have a longer history in industrial engineering, which is a
> tantalizing connection to labor history labor process theory.
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Apr 18, 2015, at 5:34 PM, Paul Fishwick <metaphorz at gmail.com
> <mailto:metaphorz at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>>
>> I recently listened to a podcast on Pickering's human-intensive computing
>> for processing astronomical data. Here is a wiki page that contains an
>> overview and
>> photograph from 1890:
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Computers
>>
>> I am seeking diagrammatic workflow models of the types of computation
>> that occurred
>> under Pickering's direction, but more generally, any articles or texts
>> that contain such
>> diagrams for human computing. I am familiar with modern formalisms
>> such as
>> BPMN: http://www.bpmn.org/ in which business workflows might be
>> formalized. I also have
>> read Grier's excellent book:
>>
>> http://www.amazon.com/When-Computers-Human-David-Grier/dp/0691091579/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1429392009&sr=8-1&keywords=when+computers+were+human
>> <http://www.amazon.com/When-Computers-Human-David-Grier/dp/0691091579/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1429392009&sr=8-1&keywords=when+computers+were+human>
>>
>> The history and cultural context is interesting to me, and most
>> appropriate for engaging
>> readers, however, the main end-point in this story-telling process,
>> for me, is for people to
>> appreciate the path toward the diagrammatic formalisms with their
>> nodes, merges, branches, and
>> connections.
>>
>> If I need to, I can embark on a path toward creating some models with
>> the written historical
>> accounts as a guide, but I thought that checking here would be the
>> best starting location in this
>> quest for diagrammatic evidence.
>>
>> -paul
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Paul Fishwick, PhD
>> Chair, ACM SIGSIM
>> Distinguished University Chair of Arts & Technology
>> and Professor of Computer Science
>> Director, Creative Automata Laboratory
>> The University of Texas at Dallas
>> Arts & Technology
>> 800 West Campbell Road, AT10
>> Richardson, TX 75080-3021
>> Home: utdallas.edu/atec/fishwick <http://utdallas.edu/atec/fishwick>
>> Lab Blog: creative-automata.com <http://creative-automata.com>
>> SIGSIM Blog: modelingforeveryone.com <http://modelingforeveryone.com>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
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-- 
Willard McCarty (www.mccarty.org.uk/), Professor, Department of Digital
Humanities, King's College London, and Digital Humanities Research
Group, University of Western Sydney