The first 5 chapters of Ted Friedman’s book, Electric Dreams: Computers in American Culture, represent a remarkable tour de force through the history of computers and related electronic technologies (for example, the concept of analog vs. digital, which we shall get into later). In these 5 chapters, we see the beginning of computers as a term for, literally, humans given the task to crunch through large amounts of calculations, to the failed invention of the difference engine by Charles Babbage, who’s status as the “the [father/grandfather](?)(S.I.C.) of modern computing” is subject to debate, all the way up through the conception of Apple’s first microcomputers (labeled “personal computers” or PCs, the modern, or should I say postmodern, incarnation of the computer?) and their defeat by Microsoft, with a little bit of Stanley Kubrick and Katharine Hepburn along the way. This is a very good summary for just 120 pages on the history of computing, and depicts the “yin and yang” attitudes and paradigms with computing very well….
The first chapter begins with notes on the beginning of computing in the late 19th century with history and critique on a slightly controversial, prominent figure in the world of computers – that figure being British inventor Charles Babbage. Babbage represents a powerful figure in the history of computing because his “difference engine” is supposed to represent the beginning of attempts to create a machine that could replicate the efforts of human “computers.” But this is a technotopian, technophilic viewpoint on the legacy of Babbage – utopian idealists who see too much in the power of technology, and impose the technological determinist viewpoint that Babbage planted the seed for the growth of computing into the massive force that would overtake humans like a force of nature. An alternative point of view, according to Ted Friedman in quotes by a computer historian, is to say that while there may be parallels between, say, the “store” and the “mill” in Babbage’s analytical engine ( he never completed the difference engine, by the way, since he wanted to make an “analytical engine” that was more versatile, which is more small evidence against technological determinism) and the RAM and CPU in a modern personal computer, and so maybe Babbage thought similarly to a modern computer engineer, in fact, according to Friedman, “he [Babbage] may have been running along very different lines of thought when he came up with his engine, lines that are hard for us to follow since we know the modern solutions.” Furthermore, most pioneers of the era of the 1940s, such as William Mauchly who worked on ENIAC and UNIVAC, said that they were NOT heavily influenced by Babbage. The “steampunk” subgenre of cyberpunk, as described in this chapter, is also very guilty of saying that if Babbage had competed the analytical, we would have seen a much faster pace of industrial advancement through the Industrial Revolution, yet the more sensible argument through all this is – Babbage’s machines were all probably more innocent experiments that did not have as much in common with modern machines as we think, and thus do not allow technological determinists to make all the audacious claims they wish to make. It is much more important to look at the social implications of Babbage’s inventions rather than to think that they will act of their own “unstoppable” accord to reinvent human society. This is especially well iterated at the end of the chapter, when we are told about Ada Lovelace, and about how she represented an important co-author, alongside Babbage, of many works on innovations in business organizational management that. in a way, represented Babbage’s true, more substantial contribution to computing – by figuring out ways to organize human computers, he is really doing a number on the determinist viewpoint now! Furthermore, in reading about Ada Lovelace, and in this section about how much so many women contributed to the assembly, programming and maintenance of computers, one sees how much more silly it is to treat technology as something that does not depend heavily on human maintenance, as determinists would like us to think….
Chapter 2 of Friedman’s book describes the further movement in computers themselves from the paradigm of analog engineering to that of digital engineering. It is interesting in this chapter for me to finally learn what the difference between analog and digital is – that for an analog process, you find something that you essentially compare to the item you are trying to measure. Yes, measurement represents an analog process because you are essentially finding an object that has been set as the standard for a type of measurement since it has become commonplace to use as a visualization aid (for example, a ruler is used measure feet or meters, which have become accepted as the units of measurement which are analog to the visual concept of distance), and you then treat that object, now an instrument of measurement, as an analog to the object you are measuring to get your answer. In this sense, there are many in-between values – rarely do you get exactly 2 inches, but more often, you get something in between. In contrast, for digital, there is no in-between, for there is only what you count as the paradigm, and you can’t count in between 1 and 2, but only 1, 2, 3,…. Ultimately, my belief is that these 2 paradigms of computing have advantages and disadvantages. For digital, its advantage is in large-scale operations where you can not afford to replicate details so sublimely as an analog system can. For it is the in-between, the “fuzzy logic” that is provided for by the analog concept that it is possible to have something between A and not-A, that allows analog to be better for more thorough and fragile (and more costly) operations like replicating sound more naturally and holistically on a vinyl record. While with digital technology, since numbers do not fade away so easily since they are less detailed and easier to reproduce, large scale operations such as computational fluid dynamics (replicating a nuclear reactor meltdown is not so easy with an analog system’s demand for detail….), as well as more basic things like transmission of messages by satellite, electric or fiber-optic cable for internet and such are better for digital technology. Indeed, analog and digital are like a technological “yin and yang”, inextricably intertwined for each their own purpose, and while they both may have stereotypical characteristics, according to the chapter (ideal vs. real, rigid vs. holistic, body vs. mind, etc.), there is never complete embodiment of those characteristics in either and so we can see that there is great potential in this dynamic system.
Chapter 3 of Friedman’s book expresses more of the “yin-yang” concept of computing, through the summary and analysis of two movies, the 1950s Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy classic Desk Set, and the 1960s Stanley Kubrick Science Fiction epic 2001: A Space Odyssey. The choice of movies is very interesting, as it seems like Desk Set pales in comparison to the power of Stanley Kubrick’s proclaimed masterpiece, but the explanation that follows is very good. The yin and yang are expressed here in the main plot and subtext in each of these movies – for Desk Set seems to have a technophilic plot with a technophobic subtext while 2001 has the opposite. This connection was not easy to make, but makes a lot of sense after a little thought. For Desk Set, there is ambivalence towards the computer, EMERAC, as the man, Richard Sumner, who is set to install the foreboding machine, is optimistic that it will make the jobs of the librarians, the clients among whom is Hepburn’s character Bunny Watson who shall be using the computer, easier and free them from menial tasks such that they will be able to fill their time with more fulfilling tasks than the data crunching to which they are accustomed. Hepburn and her colleagues are not pleased, because they enjoy their job, as evidenced by their being challenged to recite answers to random questions in the film, and they feel that this man is glossing over them to help them be convinced that they will not be laid off by the computer, as people in the payroll dept. of the library in fact were. Still, at the end, the computer proves to make mistakes and it turns out the humans are needed to take care of it. Thus, the film seems to be a satire of the 1950s sentiment towards computerization that the machines were going to eventually replace the humans like something out of a scientifiction B-Movie of the times, when in reality it does also have some elements of the feeling that computers are not an entirely innocent force in our world, since the “deus ex machina” ending does not provide the payroll people who were laid off their jobs again. In contrast, Kubrick’s 2001 is a film that clearly plays on the fears of people of the ‘60s and really makes them want to fear computers, but the subtext is that perhaps computers are not as bad, but only as bad as the humans who designed them and after which HAL is modeled. For example, though HAL kills the members of the starship’s crew in cold blood after malfunctioning, he also shows very human kindness and sensitivity in the beginning that make him seem almost more compassionate to Dave and the others than a real human being might be! This lends itself to the fact that the computers, while they may eventually be able to make their own good and bad decisions like HAL was capable of, could also only be as bad and faulty as their designers. This further brings down arguments of technological determinism, integrates the societal, human component of technology and establishes how computers can also be a veritable “yin and yang” like the analog and digital design paradigms they embody.
The conflict between the “yin and yang” in the computer world takes another interesting turn in Friedman’s Chapters 4 and 5, where the battle for the “personal computer,” or PC begins as a conflict between the shared mainframe and the Altair and ECHO personal computers, and reaches the fever pitch in Chapter 5 when IBM squares off against Apple and then Microsoft enters the picture to really give both companies a blindside by taking over the operating system/productivity suite market. It is amazing how passionate people were about the PC, with radical groups like Ted Nelson’s San Francisco- based “computer liberation” movement, the inventor who put an entire “personal computer” system in his house, the designers who tinkered with the Altair, and the way all this passion lead to such great advancements in computer power, even when the business world was skeptical of computerization as productivity hadn’t increased in ages in spite of computerization according to statistics in an earlier chapter. Truly, the men and women who tinkered with the PC were people who had an amazing ambition to do something they really enjoyed for no necessary financial gain, and their efforts paid off as Apple produced the first successful PC in the 1980s. The yin and yang argument is best concluded as Apple tried to make themselves look like the alternative to the monotony of computing by having Chiat/Day produce their 1984 super bowl ad in spite of IBM, but then ultimately ended up selling out to Microsoft by endorsing Internet Explorer. This shows the importance of both concepts – that, as a business, Apple needs to do what it needs to do to survive, even as it tries to embody a holistic, more analog vision of computing….
No comments:
Post a Comment