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

本论文研究在美国国家科学基金会科学、技术和社会计划的支持下，考察了20世纪50年代和60年代美国计算机发展与管理理论的关系。访谈和档案研究的目的是考察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算器，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，是当代重新定义文书工作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·弗雷斯特和J·C·R·利克利德。因此，这篇论文寻找冷战时期工业管理的技术研究和分析之间的联系，研究计算机设计如何成为相互竞争的社会理想之间的冲突场所。由这笔赠款支持的档案工作将在卡内基梅隆大学和明尼阿波利斯的查尔斯·巴贝奇研究所进行，卡内基梅隆大学工业管理研究生院的计算创新是创建管理理论科学基础的更大项目的一部分；以及明尼阿波利斯的查尔斯·巴贝奇研究所，信息处理行业的各种收藏的主要储存库。口述历史访谈将与该时期的几位著名计算机科学家和社会理论家进行。由于认为社会思想和技术从根本上交织在一起，这项拨款支持的研究将交互计算的发展从最初的数学逻辑故事重塑为组织理论的故事。由于现代信息技术为经济和政治参与以及新的社会组织形式创造了新的空间，该项目有助于创建一个理论框架和历史背景，以了解扩大获得技术的机会如何与不断发展的社会理想相关联。

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.