From: "Medina, Eden"
<edenm@indiana.edu>
To:
"members@sigcis.org" <members@sigcis.org>
Sent: Friday, 17 July, 2009
19:37:44
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@ieee.org]
Sent: Friday,
July 17, 2009 1:17 PM
To: Medina, Eden;
members@sigcis.orgSubject: 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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