Dissertation Award: Post-Industrial Engineering: Computer Science and the Organization of Work, 1950-1975

本论文的研究，在NSF的科学，技术和社会计划的支持下，调查在20世纪50年代和60年代在美国的计算机发展与管理理论的关系。访谈和档案研究的目的是研究早期人工智能机器的设计，如卡内基梅隆大学的逻辑理论家和通用问题解决者，以及交互式分时计算系统的设计，如麻省理工学院的MAC项目，是当代重新定义文职人员和中层管理人员角色的努力的一部分。这些研究项目涉及到对管理理论和计算机工程都有贡献的重要人物，如赫伯特西蒙、杰伊福雷斯特和J. C。R.利克莱德因此，本论文寻求技术研究和冷战时期工业管理分析之间的联系，研究计算机设计如何成为相互竞争的社会理想之间冲突的场所。在那里，工业管理研究生院的计算创新是一个更大的项目的一部分，该项目为管理理论;和在明尼阿波利斯的查尔斯巴贝奇研究所，一个主要的信息处理行业的各种收藏库。口述历史访谈将与几位杰出的计算机科学家和社会理论家从该时期进行。通过考虑社会思想和技术从根本上交织在一起，这项研究资助的研究重新构建了交互式计算的发展，从主要是一个数理逻辑的故事到组织理论之一。随着现代信息技术为经济和政治参与以及新形式的社会组织创造了新的空间，该项目有助于创建一个理论框架和历史背景，以了解扩大技术获取如何与不断发展的社会理想相关。

This dissertation research, supported by the Science, Technology, and Society Program at NSF, investigates the relationship of computer development to management theory in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s. The goal of the interview and archival research is to examine how the designs of early artificial intelligence machines, such as Logic Theorist and the General Problem Solver at Carnegie Mellon, and of interactive, time-shared computing systems, such as Project MAC at MIT, were part of contemporary efforts to redefine the roles of clerical workers and middle management. These research programs involved major figures who contributed both to management theory and to computer engineering, such as Herbert Simon, Jay Forrester, and J. C. R. Licklider. This dissertation therefore seeks out the connections between technical research and analyses of industrial management in the Cold War years, examining how computer design was a site for conflict among competing social ideals.The archival work supported by this grant will be carried out at Carnegie Mellon University, where innovations in computation in the Graduate School of Industrial Administration were part of a larger project of creating a scientific basis for management theory; and at the Charles Babbage Institute in Minneapolis, a major repository for diverse collections from the information processing industry. Oral history interviews will be carried out with several prominent computer scientists and social theorists from the period.By considering social thought and technology as fundamentally intertwined, the research supported by this grant reframes the development of interactive computing from being primarily a story of mathematical logic to one of organizational theory. As modern information technology creates new spaces for economic and political engagement and new forms of social organization, this project helps create a theoretical framework and a historical context for understanding how expanding access to technology can be related to evolving social ideals.