Computers in Context

Bo Dahlbom, Lars Mathiassen

Chapter 1 Computers
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Using Computers
The Mechanistic Heritage
Representation and Formalization
Rules and Rationality
Computers and Bureaucracies
Coping with Change
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Listen to Howard Aiken physicist at Harvard and designer of some of the very
first computers, speaking in 1956: “…if it should ever turn out that the basic
logics of a machine designed for the numerical solution of differential equations
coincide with the logics of a machine intended to make bills for a department
store, I would regard this as the most amazing coincidence that I have ever en-
countered.”

Aiken was terribly mistaken, but certainly not for lack of computer technology
expertise. Compare his prediction to that of John McCarthy, mathematician and
inventor of Lisp, writing in that same year 1956 to the Rockefeller Foundation,
asking for money to finance the first Artificial Intelligence conference at
Dartmouth College: “The study is to proceed on the basis of the conjecture that
every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in principle be so
precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it.”

Aiken was very much influenced by the usage that had motivated him, and
others, when constructing the first computing machines. McCarthy based his
view of what computers could do on an understanding of the principles of a
general computing machine, rather than on the actual capacity and use of the
machines of his time. Together they cover the field, if we are looking for answers
to what computers can do.

Aiken is cautious and unimaginative. McCarthy is optimistic, at least when he

goes from speaking in principle to predicting practice. But is he right in
principle? What are the limits to the possible use of computers? And how are
those limits set? By our imagination? By our needs? Or, by the principles of
computing?

Using Computers
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Think of the first time you suc-ceeded in making a computer do what you
intended it to do. Think of the feeling it gave you of being in control of a powerful
machine. Before getting too excited, don’t forget the times you had to struggle to
make the computer do what you wanted. You could not get the right result, or,
worse, there was no reaction at all. Remember the direct way in which mistakes
or incon-sistencies in your first programs were revealed and the difficulties you
sometimes had when you were trying to correct the programs. You knew that
something was wrong, but you had no idea what it was.

Computers are fascinating be-cause they are fast, powerful and extremely
versatile machines, and because they are programmable. They will obey your
most whimsical command, provided they can interpret it. It is really magic: they
do exactly what you tell them to do. But of course you have to think and express
yourself clearly, you have to be careful with your words.

We can use computers to play with texts and immediately see the conse-quences.
It is easy to reuse text and to experiment with different formulations and the
sequence in which we present our argument. There is no guarantee, of course,
that texts produced on computers are better in quality, clearer and richer. But
computers are extremely effective tools for producing, modifying and combining
texts, and it is fascinating to play and experiment, trying to be convincing, clear
or even poetic.

We also use computers to explore the world without having to suffer the real
world consequences. Kids fight monsters without ever getting hurt. Pilots are
trained in flight simu-lators without severe risks and for less money.
Investments are evaluated without running the risk of losing fortunes. And
bridges and highways are designed and tested without suffering collapses or
traffic jams.

In general, we use computers to process, communicate, store and keep track of

information. And they provide us with new and useful opportunities and liberate
us from many laborious and boring tasks. It is not surprising that the
development of computer systems raises difficult questions. We use computers to
automate administra-tive tasks and to mechanize and automate production
processes. But how can we make sure that the good qualities of the traditional
manual way of doing things are not lost? And what about unemployment?

We use computers to provide us with information as a basis for decision making.

To what extent can we rely on data from the computer? Are data up-to-date and
correct? What kinds of interpreta-tions were made when data were originally
registered? What about the uncertainties introduced by our own interpretations?
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Computers are used to monitor and control complex technical systems to

minimize errors and avoid break-downs and catastrophes. But computer systems
are themselves complex artifacts that introduce new sources of error and
uncertainty. And what about political issues? Do we want to use computers to
keep track of people’s every move and opinion? Do we want to use them to
develop advanced military systems in outer space?

All these questions concern quality. People are concerned with the quality of
work as computers replace old work habits and introduce new ones. We have to
worry about the quality of data and information when computers are used, as
they so often are, to provide decision support. As citizens we should be concerned
with the quality of life in a society pervaded by information technology. And as
systems developers we are concerned about the quality of a particular computer
system in relation to the wants and needs of the customer or user.

When, in this book, we discuss the development and use of computer systems, we
have all these aspects of quality, and more, in mind. In fact, our philosophy is
that the development of computer systems is a constant struggle with quality.
This struggle with quality constitutes the fundamental challenge and fascination
of being a systems developer. Before expanding further on this theme, we must,
however, go deeper into the very idea of computing.

The Mechanistic Heritage

Electronic computers have been around since World War II. Before then,
computers were people working in big insurance companies or ballistic research
laboratories performing long and tedious calcula-tions. These human computers
used desk calculators to perform simple subtasks of addition and multiplication,
combining these subtasks into the computation of more complex functions.

During the war, new artillery weapons were developed at such a pace that the
human computers were falling far behind in computing the necessary firing
tables. As a result, the American government was interested in supporting
attempts to construct “an automatic calculator.” Early such machines, like
Aiken’s Mark 1, used electromagnetic relay technology. The decisive step to a
full-blown computing machine was taken when the machines were made
electronic with possibilities to store programs in their memories. The electronic
representation of data made it possible to change the contents of registers much
faster than in the mechanical machines. The idea of looking at computational
procedures as data, of storing programs in memory, made it possible and easy to
change the function to be computed.
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The electronic computers were built to replace the human computers. They were
designed as technical devices to be fed with numbers and computational
procedures. They could compute according to prescribed procedures and deliver
the computed results as output.

Classical computer science has linked human computing and machine computing
in the so-called Church-Turing thesis: everything that a hu-man being can
compute can be computed by a machine. According to this thesis, our intuitive
under-standing of computation refers to the set of computations that can be
formally prescribed. Closely related to this idea is the concept of an algorithm.

An algorithm is an instruction (plan or procedure) for how to manipulate some

given input to produce some desired output. An instruction is an algorithm if it is
finite, definite and effective. That it is finite means that it can be mathematically
proved to terminate, that is, finish after a finite number of steps. That it is
definite means that each manipulation is well-defined and precise. That it is
effective means that each manipulation is so elementary that it can be performed
by a human being using just pen and paper, or by a machine.

The algorithm, with its strict definition, is a bridge between our intuitive notion
of (human) computation and the idea of a computing machine. Any algorithm
can be implemented on a machine so if human computation is algorithmic, then
the Church-Turing thesis is true. But notice that this thesis cannot be
mathematically proved, since it relies on an intuition about what it is for a
human being to compute.

The construction of the electronic computer was the crowning achievement of a

long tradition in our culture identifying thinking with computation. This theory
of thinking was formulated clearly already by the French philosopher and
scientist René Descartes (1596-1650). Inspired by his work in mathematics,
Descartes developed a theory of thinking as the rational manipulation of symbols
by means of rules. When people spoke of the early computers as electronic
brains, as intelligent, thinking machines, they simply applied the Cartesian idea
of thinking as computation.

But something is obviously wrong here. Thinking is the essence of being human,
according to Descartes, the human mind is a thinking thing, a res cogitans. But
the computers we see around us are anything but human. They don’t reason,
argue, plan, fantasize, imagine, memorize, hope, or foresee? They compute but
they don’t think. Does this mean that Descartes was wrong? And not only
Descartes, but our whole modern conception of thinking underly-ing the
construction of the computer and the development of computer science? Some
would say yes, there is something wrong here. Others would argue that it is only
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a matter of pro-gramming: If the computer on your desk does not seem to be a

thinking thing, this is only because there has not been enough programming
done.

Like so many other questions raised by the ongoing comput-erization of work

and society, your answer to this question will express your fundamental view of
the world. If your answer is “yes, with more programming, computers will
become thinking machines,” it is likely that you will agree with many of the
ideas of the Mechanistic world view as developed by the great 17th century
system builders, like Descartes and the German philosopher and mathematician
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716). In this world view we find a general
and powerful idea about computation, related to ideas of representation,
formalization, program, order and control.

If your answer is “no, a machine can never be made to think,” then you are
probably more of a Romantic, more attuned to the Romantic world view of the
early 19th cen-tury. This is a very different conception of the world based on
ideas about interpretation, uniqueness, chaos and change. In the next chapter
we shall discuss this Romantic alternative.

We shall begin, in this chapter, by taking a more careful look at our Mechanistic
heritage. This heritage exerts a powerful influence on all of us, whether we
believe in the project of turning computers into thinking machines or not.

But before we do that, let us just say a few words about world views. We don’t
often find reason to think deeply about how we view the world, and we seldom
have to formulate or pledge allegiance to a coherent world view. Our world views
tend to consist of more or less loosely related, sometimes conflicting elements,
some explicit and some tacit, gathered from very different sources.

Most of us have world views that combine both Mechanistic and Romantic ideas,
even if we would not normally identify them by these terms. Just in order to be
interested in computers, you have to be Mechanistically oriented. And in order to
be the kind of person who would read a book like this, you probably have to be
touched by Romantic ideas.

A discussion of the Mechanistic world view is not only an examination of ideas

that have dominated the development and use of the electronic computer. It is
also a way of reflecting on our own ideas about computers and their use,
reflecting on the roots, nature and legitimacy of those ideas.

Representation and Formalization

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A powerful process of change, called modernization, began in 16th century

Europe. The modernization process affected all aspects of human life. It changed
a society dominated by farming and craft, religion and miracles, authority and
tradition into a world of technology and science, democracy and liberty, progress
and revolutions. Religious upheavals, industrial expansion, the central
perspective in art, the exploitation of America and the invention of the machine
were all parts of this process of modernization.

To come to grips with their changing world, the modern Europeans developed
natural science. The new physics taught that our naive perception of the world is
loaded with errors, that the world is not what it seems to be. The sun seems to be
moving across the sky, but isn’t. Objects seem to be colored, but aren’t. With the
recognition of systematic perceptual errors, the world and our representation of
it become clearly distinguished. Our perception of the world does not coincide
with the world itself. The world itself is out there, our experience of it is in here,
in the mind.

This dualism of external world and inner life that we now take for granted is
really a modern, recent idea. The explicit distinction, between the world and our
representations of it, was a necessary condition for the project of modern science:
to replace our naive perceptions with true, scientifically based representations of
reality.

No one did more than Descartes to promote the idea of knowledge as the
representation in the mind of a world out there. The mind is a mirror of the
world, Descartes could say in a time when glass-making had advanced enough to
make mirrors high fashion. But an imperfect, cloudy mirror distorts its object,
and our minds are not to be trusted, so we have to make sure that our ideas are
clear and exact before we depend on them to give us an accurate picture of the
world.

Unclear ideas confuse us about the world and get confused with one another.
Images, the pictures of the world we see in our mind, contain an abundance of
material—subjective properties like color, taste, and smell—that is not to be
found in the world. The Mechanistic world view challenges us to strip our ideas
of such subjective material in order to make them true to the world. Like Galileo
(1564-1642) before him, Descartes came to argue that we have to use
mathematics as a means of representa-tion in order to map the world in a clear
and exact way. The world is like an open book for us to read, and it is written in
the language of mathematics.

Galileo worked with geometry, using lines, triangles and squares to represent
properties like velocity and acceleration. Transforming geometry into algebra in
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his analytic geometry, Descartes could do mechanics with numbers and alge-
braic functions and argue that algebra provides us with the exact symbols we
need to represent the world truthfully.

Today, it is easy for us to recognize the powerful idea of formal-ization in the

Mechanistic struggle to arrive at clear and exact ideas. But the Mechanists did
not only want to formalize the ideas or symbols we use to represent the world,
they also wanted to formalize the process of thinking itself. With the use of
mathematical symbolism as means of representation follows the idea that
thinking is the manipulation of these symbols, that thinking is mathematical
reasoning, calculation and proof. What dis-tinguishes mathematical reasoning
from ev-eryday pondering is its ex-plicit reliance on rules, on logic. Just as the
use of mathematics in representing the world is moti-vated by a desire for exact,
explicit knowledge, so the idea of thinking as computation is developed to give us
a conception of thinking as exact and explicit rule following.

We have to realize, of course, that the idea of thinking as mathematical

computation, as formulated by Descartes and later developed by Leibniz, was
more of an idea than a full-blown theory. Both symbolism and math-ematical
reasoning were in those days still fairly informal and needed much work before
we could truly speak of them as exact and explicit.

Leibniz worked hard on developing a mathematical notation, a universal

calculus, that could serve as means for represent-ing and reasoning about all our
knowledge of the world. As part of this project he built several small calculators
to test his ideas of exact reasoning. In these efforts he was motivated by the
modern belief in knowledge as the universal problem solver and means to
progress. He hoped that such a language, used both locally and in international
diplomacy, would put an end to conflicts of all kinds, based as they were on
misunderstanding due to the use of inexact, informal language. Indeed, a
powerful dream in a 17th century Europe ravaged by wars and religious
conflicts.

By introducing explicit rules for how to express ourselves, we can develop more
exact representations and avoid misunderstanding. The computer, as we have
come to know it, is based on the application of explicit rules and the idea of for
representation.

For computers to be of any use, we have to agree on how to apply a certain

concept or how to interpret a specific physical state as a symbol. The computer is
of no use without formalizations. And without the computer there would be one
reason less to formalize observa-tions about patients in hospitals, or information
about employees and cus-tomers in the organizations where we work.
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The Mechanistic ideas of representation and formalization are at the very heart
of computing. Data are representations of facts, and the computer is a technology
for storing and manipulating data. Without the idea of representation we would
have no computers. Without computers we would not have the same potential for
automatically manipulating our representations of the world.

Rules and Rationality

The modern world view is a rational view of the world. Rational think-ing is the
conscious, competent administration of ideas, aided by a method. To rationalize
is to set on rules, to develop methods, write up pro-grams. To be really rational
you need not only follow rules, you have to know and be able to state and defend
the rules you are following in your thinking. Before you undertake an action, you
formulate the rules; before you develop a system, you formulate your method.
The real work lies in choosing, formulating and motivating the rules, the
method. The rest is routine. A machine can do it.

Modern science with its method is only one example of a social institution
rationalized by explicit rules. Descartes’ scientific method—his “rules for the
direction of the mind”—has its coun-terpart in the explicit and unequivocal rules
controlling a bureau-cracy, in the written instruction manual for op-erating and
repairing a modern machine, in the explicitly formulated consti-tution of a
modern democratic society, in the official curricu-lum for a modern educational
institution, and so on.

For the Mechanists it is the business of science to map the world, to give a
systematic, preferably axiomatized, definite, and true account of the world. This
is possible because the world it-self is an ordered, fundamentally unchanging
system.

Newton’s mechanics, with its three basic laws, is the outstanding example of an
ordered system. Leibniz gave us a particularly powerful conception of the world
as such a system, a world that is deterministic and governed by two fundamental
principles: the principle of sufficient reason and the principle of pre-established
harmony. Nothing can exist without a reason, and everything that is has to be in
harmony with everything else that is.

The 17th century intellectuals were fascinated by machines, and this interest
influenced their image of the world. Descartes and Leibniz both played with
machines as toys and as powerful ideas. They saw not only the world as a
machine, but also the body (Descartes) and society (Leibniz). They laid the
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foundation, as we have seen, for thinking of thinking itself as a me-chanical

process.

When you see something as a machine, be it the world, the body or society, you
want to take it apart and make explicit the rules governing its behavior. When
you know the rules, or perhaps better the laws, governing the functioning of a
machine, then you can control it. When you realize that the heart is a pump you
know how to deal with it. A society governed by rules can be controlled by those
formulating the rules. To follow rules in your thinking is to control your
thinking.

The Mechanistic emphasis on ra-tionalism, on methods and programs, has had a

strong impact on the development of computer technology and on the ways we
think of programming and systems development.

To use computers we need programs, and to program we need methods. The

history of computing can be seen as a continuing attempt to develop
programming languages and methods for programming.

But the real challenge in computing lies in exploring and applying the
Mechanistic world view, while at the same time understanding and appreciat-ing
the limits of its application. When we try to control the world with computer
programs or methods for systems development, we should not forget that the
Mechanistic world view is based on the assumption that the world we are trying
to understand and control is itself an ordered, fundamentally unchanging
system.

Computers and Bureaucracies

The Mechanistic world view has influenced organizations and society long before
the invention of the electronic computer, and we can learn a lot about computers
and formalization by looking more generally at the ways we organize human
activities.

Every organized human activity — from producing milk to developing computer

systems — gives rise to two fundamental and opposite requirements: the division
of labor into various tasks, and the coordination of these tasks to accomplish the
activity as a whole.

If more than one person participates in a systems development project, we must

divide the task, for in-stance by designing the system as a set of related modules.
Such modules are not only parts of the final system. They also define separate
work tasks to be performed as part of the devel-opment effort. One of the
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important functions of a design specification is to serve as a basis for the division

of labor during the project.

But a good design document, dividing the labor well, does not automatically lead
to a satisfactory system. During implementation, we must evaluate and test the
indi-vidual modules, and, even more cru-cial, perform integration tests and
evaluate the operation of the total system. In addition to design documents
defining the division of labor, we need other techniques to support the
coordination of individual tasks to accomplish a satisfactory result as a whole.

Organizations use different strategies for dividing labor and achieving

coordination between individuals and groups. Ship yards, textile factories,
hospitals, car repair shops and systems development projects each have different
approaches to effective organization.

To understand the differences between organizations and to facilitate the design

of effective organizations we identify a number of abstract or ideal types of
organization with different structural characteristics. The most well-known is
the bureaucracy.

An organization is bureaucratic to the extent that the behavior of its actors is

predetermined or predictable. The bureaucratic approach to organization is to
rely on rules in prescrib-ing behavior and achieving coordination. Bureaucracies
are programmed. The assumption is that we know in advance what to do: the
task uncer-tainty of the organization is low.

Bureaucracies are designed to be efficient by minimizing direct interac-tion

between individuals and groups. Coordination is achieved by having each group
or individual follow prescribed rules. When the rules do not apply, decisions are
made by a hierarchy of managers, the hierarchy being the most efficient way to
organize communication.

In a bureaucracy, management is kept separate from actual production. Workers

are not supposed to make decisions. They produce goods or services accord-ing to
in-structions, only informing their managers about deviations and problems.
Managers make decisions. They develop new plans and formulate instructions
based on previous plans and status information.

A bureaucracy is like a computer, and like the computer, it is a powerful

expression of Mechanistic ideals. A bureaucratic orga-nization is programmed,
its work tasks are explicitly defined and formalized. It is a machine in which
computing machines have their natural place, providing efficient processing and
communication of information about products, activities and resources.
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The computer is a perfect bu-reaucrat, and it invites us to think like

bureaucrats. We cannot use it without formalizing. The formalization imperative
is in most cases quite obvious. We cannot develop a com-puter based account-ing
system without formalizing what is meant by an account and what is meant by
various transac-tions on an account. In other cases, the formal-ization impera-
tive is less obvious even if it is still there. In developing a com-puter based text
processing system we do not have to formalize what we write about. But we do
have to formalize the format in which we write it. Otherwise the computer will
be of little help in manipulating, storing and communicating the text.

Traditional production control sys-tems provide a classic example of the

bureaucratic use of computers. Coordination is viewed as a rational decision
process where sta-tus information is produced on the shop floor and compiled
through the computer system. Plans are cre-ated by production managers and
foremen on different levels of detail and these plans are distributed through the
computer system.

The role of the foreman is to make de-tailed plans expressing what each
individual worker has to do and how the machines on the shop floor should be
utilized. The foreman communicates these plans to the workers, and they report
back to him when jobs are finished or breakdowns occur. He makes decisions on
how to handle delays and break-downs, compiles reports to the production
planner, and receives overall plans for the production in his department.

The computer is used to communicate, process and store the information needed
to manage and coordi-nate the activities on the shop floor into one integrated
effort. Workers, foremen and production planners use the computer to generate,
receive and process information. The assumption is that the information
provided by the computer system represents the actual state of production and
commitments. The computer is used in ac-cordance with the Mechanistic view of
the world to support rational decision making in optimizing management of
resources.

In our everyday activities we all rely on bureaucratic approaches. And we have

begun to use computers to support us in doing so. But we tend to forget the basic
weakness of the bureaucratic approach. When the environment changes and the
task uncertainty increases, we are ill prepared. Since our behavior and thinking
have been shaped by bureaucratic procedures, we are unwilling to engage in
change, and we don’t have the necessary resources to do so. Our computers are
not making it any easier.

Coping with Change

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An organization operates in an environment. This environment comprises

everything outside the (full control of the) organization that is of importance to
its performance. This includes the nature of its products, customers, and
competitors, the economic and political climate in which it must operate, and the
kind of technolo-gies on which it is depends.

The environment of a specific organization may range from stable to dynamic,

from that of the stone mason whose customers demand the same product decade
after decade, to that of a medical research team trying to develop a new and
effective medicine. A stable environment may, of course, change over time. But
the variations are predictable. In contrast, the environment of the research team
is dynamic in the sense of being highly unpredictable. The team has one or more
theories on how to cure a specific disease, but they have no certain knowledge
about what technologies to use, nor can they effectively predict whether and
when they will succeed in their efforts. They simply have to try.

The effectiveness of an organizational structure is strongly dependent on the

environment of the organization. The economic use of information is the
strength, but also the weakness, of the bureaucracy. The more the environment
of a bureaucracy changes, the more often its rules will not apply, and the more
the management hierarchy will have to intervene. The Achilles heel of a
bureaucracy is its inability to respond effectively to change.

When a bureaucratic organization fails, more organic structures will emerge. An

organic structure can be defined by the absence of formalization, by the absence
of explicit rules prescribing or determining the behavior of the actors.
Bureaucratic structures are hierarchical. Organic structures are more like
networks.

The organic approach to or-ganization is to rely on informal and direct

interaction to achieve coordination between individuals and groups. The
assumption is that the task uncertainty of the organization is high. New
information related to organizing the activity will therefore become available as
the activity is performed. To make this information useful, the involved actors
must have the opportunity and obligation to communicate and interact. All
actors are supposed to engage actively in decision making and planning as the
activities are performed. Management and production are integrated.

Bureaucratic organizations are like machines, organic organizations like living

organisms. Bureaucracies are based on a belief in, and a striving for, stability,
order and control. Organic structures are designed to cope effectively with
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dynamic environments. They go beyond the basic assumptions of the Mechanistic

world view, offering a constructive response to the limitations of bureaucracies.

Strangely enough, the computer has proved to be a useful element in organic

strategies. In electronic mail systems some degree of formalization is required.
Communication forms and facilities for storing and retrieving information are
formalized. Also, such systems have to provide formal informa-tion about the
addresses in the network. The success of electronic mail systems, however, lies in
the informal and direct way in which communication is possible.

Electronic mail systems are explicitly designed to support organic coordination.

But traditional computer systems can also be reinterpreted from an organic point
of view. Let us illustrate how we can learn more about the use of a traditional
production control system by such a reinterpretation.

From an organic perspective, coordination can be viewed as dynamic negotiation

and creation of commitments. The role of the foreman is to act as middle man
between the production planners and the workers. As in the bureaucracy,
workers, foremen and production planners communicate in a cooperative effort
to coordinate activities. But at the same time they play opportunistic games for
individual gain. Information is not necessarily to be trusted, because individual
actors might withhold information or, even worse, misinform to gain a personal
advantage.

The foreman is not primarily a decision maker. He has to listen, negotiate, and
manipulate to manage resources in a satisfactory way. As in the bureaucratic
case, the computer based production control system is used to communicate,
process and store information. But to be effective, the com-puter system should
also support the actors in negotiating and administrating commitments, in
addition to traditional production planning.

The organization is no longer viewed as a machine but rather as a dynamic

network or an organism. Uncertainty of information has become an impor-tant
is-sue and the best one can hope for is a satisfactory, rather than optimal,
utilization of resources on the shop floor.

We often rely on organic approaches to organization in our everyday activities.

We discuss with colleagues, we participate in ad-hoc meetings, and we are
members of autonomous groups that have been assigned more or less well-
defined tasks. We have also become accustomed to using computers in doing so.

People cooperate across organizational and national bound-aries. Project groups

are formed in which the members are organiza-tionally and geographically
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dispersed. These kinds of organic structures would not be effective, or even

possible, without technologies like telephone and airmail that can link the actors
to-gether in an informal and highly interactive fashion. But computer networks
and hypermedia radically increase our ability to informally and directly
coordinate activities between groups and individual actors across organizational
and geographical boundaries.

But before the picture we have painted of organic forms of thinking and
organizing becomes too glowing, we had better stop and consider its weaknesses.
And then it is clear, of course, that with an organic approach we do not utilize
the fundamental strength of the computer: its ability to process formalized
information. With the use of a computer we do not have to write each letter from
scratch. We can use a standardized format, and let the computer aid us in
comparing, categorizing, and evalu-ating messages. Often it is conve-nient to
have some kind of standardized format, or even standardized ways of providing
the information by enumerating in advance the possible choices as in a
traditional questionnaire.

There are both practical and economic reasons for formalizing information when
using computers. In general, we know that the more stable and repetitive our
work, the more we tend to apply bureaucratic approaches. Not only because we
are told to do so, but because we find it effective and helpful.

In the way exemplified here, we can go back and forth between the way we think
of computers and the way we think about social organizations, in the process
learning more about both. Mechanistic ideals and the formalization imperative
continue to have a strong influence on both computers and organizations.
Modular thinking and hierarchical structures have dominated our conception of
computer systems. To deal with the complexity of these systems we have
struggled to separate concerns as we divide labor in the classical bureaucracy.
We have also tried to economize with exchange of information by relying on
hierarchical structures thereby minimizing the number of active information
channels between modules. We have been very successful in turning the
computer into a perfect bureaucrat, computer systems into well ordered
bureaucracies.

But as a consequence of this, the technology is not particularly well suited to the
use in more organic forms of organizations. And its bureaucratic nature has been
a restraint on our imagination in finding new use for the technology. For a long
time its use was mainly restricted to the bureaucratic functions of organizations
and it acted as a support for the bureaucratic nature of those organizations. But
that is changing now as our interest in organic forms of organization has grown
enough to make us begin to rethink the very nature of computer technology.
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Parallel architectures, neural nets, networks and hyperstructures are all

examples of more organic ways of thinking of computers and computer systems.
New ways of organizing have changed the way we think about computers and
vice versa.

The computer artifact has long since out-grown the image of the human
computer. As its use has diversified our understanding of it has diversified as
well. If we work with electronic mail systems we naturally focus on those
qualities of computers that make us think of them as media. If we work with sta-
tistical program packages we will attend to other qualities and see the artifact as
a computing machine. Understanding and evaluating a text processing system it
is best to treat the system as a tool for producing texts. But in many cases
several competing perspectives are equally relevant in understanding and
designing computer systems. If all you have is a hammer, the world tends to look
like a nail. It isn’t.