Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
between the wars 'technocratic' ideas were also developed which
saw science and technology as the solution to various social and
political issues. The Second World War greatly advanced the devel-
opment of systems of production, organization and deployment
and also produced a glut of experienced, enthusiastic engineers
who were looking for places in which to exploit their new skills
and understandings. This led to the wide use of systems approaches
to production in all areas of industry. This was manifested in
Cybernetics-influenced techniques and theories of 'systems analysis'.
With these anything could be analysed as a 'component' within a
larger 'system'. Such techniques could be and were applied equally
to machinery, military strategy, industrial organization, business
planning, urban planning and even government.
The close relationship between computing, military planning
and business is made evident in the post-war period. At almost
exactly the same period as Jay Forrester, architect of the Whirlwind
computer system, the basis of SAGE, left the military to become a
professor at the Sloan School of Management at MIT, the President
of Ford, Robert McNamara, was appointed President Kennedy's
Secretary of Defense. McNamara had originally been a professor at
the Harvard Business School. During the War he had applied his
business skills to Operations Research problems, in particular the
logistics of bombing. After the War he and others involved in such
work had applied their experiences to industrial manufacturing at
Ford, eventually leading to his assumption of the Ford presidency. In
a sense McNamara's career exemplifies the close relation between
computing, business and military strategy. Under the aegis of the
technocratic, cybernetic culture of Cold War America, such a fit
would not seem unusual. Yet McNamara's attempts to apply rational
cybernetic solutions to the Vietnam War were disastrous. Nor were
the applications of cybernetic ideas in their Cold War form to indus-
try and the economy adequate to predict or deal with the immense
disruptions of the
1970
s and '
80
s.
