COPING WITH COMPUTERS

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31129, 4 August 1966, Page 11

COPING WITH COMPUTERS

l It will come as no particu- ! lar surprise that Mr Edward ! Heath should now advocate • computer studies in schools; the Kipling wing of his party I sees him as something of a 1 computer himself. For Mr ’ Heath, in the bracing air of . Hounslow, the reasoning was ’ very clear. Computers were j an essential part of the tech- > nological explosion that was . going to transform all our j lives. So computer studies " r should be introduced into the t schools syllabus for all those r staying on to take G.C.E. t It is possible to detect a . gap in reasoning here. Per- , haps an analogy will help to ’ show it up. It would be 5 reasonable to say that the - internal combustion engine ; has played an essential part in the technological explosion which has, in this century. : transformed all our lives. But ; we do not train the majority ; of the population to be motor ; mechanics. Come to that, we ; do not use the state system of 1 education to teach the major--1 ity of the population to drive; though perhaps we should do this. The fact that a particu- ; lar technique is likely to have ; the highest conceivable im- ; portance for the society in ! which we live is not in itself I a reason for introducing in- ! struction in that technique ; into the educational system. What we have to educate I most people to do, is to live ! with the social consequences : of new techniques; and the ; kind of education that is ; necessary for this purpose Imay have little to do with the techniques themselves. The cardinal social fact to which education must address Itself is this: that in this

century we have learnt, in principle, how to aboHsh routine work. The whole of technological history, since the beginnings of the industrial revolution, has given us only the power to aboHsh physical labour. The computer gives us the power to abolish routine mental work as well. Yet the computer itself is only a sophisticated adding machine; and if it can replace the routine intellectual work of a whole civilisation—with its banks and insurance companies and tax offices, and its worried under-managers

practising Inefficient forms of stock control—this is because the functions of most of the impressive institutions of that civilisation are, or can be reduced to, sophisticated adding. Most of the costly administrative apparatus of our world is engaged in just two functions: applying set rules to specific situations, or optimising (that is,literally, making the best of) some factor like profitability which depends on several variables. Now either of these can be performed perfectly well by a machine; but before they can be performed, these functions must be separated from the distinct, and distinctively human, functions of deciding what rules to have and deciding what factors to optimise, and how to measure them. But in business and industry as they now stand, these human decisions that depend on value judgments are interwoven with routine at every point It is the great intellectual task of our half-century to separate them; to build the routine into careful programmes that a machine can follow, and yet still allow room for the value judgments that only a human being can supply. This is in essence what the computer men, from the most exalted systems analyst to the humblest programmer, are doing; and because it so intimately affects the human values by which we live, it is impossible to leave it to them alone. It is, after all, technically possible that a computer, moved by some general instruction from a well-intentioned community, should move whole industries about the country, should hire and fire men, and should wage

nuclear war. We have to submit an imbecilic monster to poHtical control; and in a policy where the opinion of every individual must be counted, every individual must understand how that monster is controlled. For that, he must understand what the monster is, and what it is not, capable of doing. It is not necessary that.he should become a programmer; indeed, in a thoroughly computerised world, the job of programmer is one of the few routine and dead-end jobs there is likely to be. But he should know what a programme is, and perhaps write a simple one, to learn how little you can leave to a machine, and how carefully you must formulate its instructions. He should know about flow diagrams, and numerical methods in general; he should know something about logic. He should learn, too, the limitations of machine languages; the sort of questions that cannot be answered in them, because they cannot be asked. Some few students will go on to work with computers: they need technical courses, in technical colleges. The ordinary intelligent man must know enough for the machine to lose its mystery; for him to see how it is used as a tool; for him to appreciate how things must be reorganised for the tool to be put to fullest use. That is aIL And for that purpose it is not necessary to buy expensive hardware or replace a G.C.E. subject with a course in programming.

»»»»»»»»»»• A leading article in "The Timet” Educational Supplement, Map 30. 1956.