Part 38

The impact of the computer on education, language and communication, and the handling of information is obviously already strongly felt. These inroads will be increased, and progress hastened in the years ahead of us. Perhaps of the greatest importance is the assigning to the machine functions closer to the roots of all these things. Rather than simply read or translate language, for example, the computer seems destined to improve on it. The same applies to the process of teaching and to the storage and retrieval of data. The electronic computer has shown that it is not a passive piece of equipment, but active and dynamic in nature. It will soon be as much a part of the classroom and library as books; one day it may take the place of books themselves.

Lichty, © Field Enterprises, Inc.

“How come they spend over a million on our new school, Miss Finch, and then forget to put in computer machines?” ]

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“’Tis one and the same Nature that rolls on her course, and whoever has sufficiently considered the present state of things might certainly conclude as to both the future and the past.”

—Montaigne

11: The Road Ahead

In Book One of Les Miserables, Cosette says, “Would you realize what Revolution is, call it Progress; and would you realize what Progress is, call it Tomorrow.” Victor Hugo’s definitions apply well to what has been termed by some the computer revolution and by others simply the natural evolution of species. The computer has a past and a present, differentiated mainly by the slope of the line plotting progress against time. Its future, which blurs somewhat with the present, will obviously be characterized by a line approaching the vertical.

The intelligent machine has been postulated for years, first by the scientist, then by the science-fiction writer, and now again by the scientist. Norbert Wiener of cybernetics fame, Ashby and his homeostat, Grey Walter and his mechanical turtles, A. M. Turing, John von Neumann, and others, have recently been joined by men like Ramo, Samuel, Newell, et al., who, if not actually beating the drums for machine intelligence, do more than admit to the possibility. For each such pro there are cons, of course, from sincere, intelligent authorities who in effect holler “Get a horse!” at those who say the computer is coming.

The Royal Society in England met its stiffest opposition from otherwise intelligent people who deplored naturalism in any form. Perhaps such detractors are a necessary goad, a part of progress. At any rate, science survived the Nicholas Gimcrack jibes of the Popes and Addisons and Swifts. Darwin was more right than Butler, though the latter probably made more money from his work. Today, we find a parallel situation in that there are those who refuse to accept the computer as an intelligent machine, though it is interesting to watch these objectors regroup and draw another line the machine dare not go past.

The writers of science and pseudo-science have often been accused of fantasy and blue-sky dreams. A case in point in the electronics field is the so-called “journalistor” or marvelous successor to the transistor. Such riding off in all directions with each new laboratory experiment may be justified in that it prods the scientist who must keep up with the press and his advertising department! This theory apparently works, and now it seems that the most startling and fantastic stories come not from writers, but from the scientists themselves.

In 1960 the Western Joint Computer Conference was held in San Francisco, and one session was devoted to the fanciful design and use of a computer with the problem-solving capability of an intelligent man and the speed and capacity of a high-speed data-processor. It was proposed to use “tunnel-effect tetrodes” with a switching time of one ten-billionth of a second as the logic and storage elements. These would be fabricated of thin-film materials by electron beam micromachining, and 100 billion of them could be packed into a cubic inch volume. With these tiny components and new circuit modes a supercomputer could be built, stored with information, and programmed to solve what one of the participants called the most difficult problem the human being faces today—that of bargaining.

This computer has not yet been built; it won’t be for some time. But design and fabrication are moving in that direction on a number of fronts. One of these fronts is that of hardware, the components used in building up the computer circuitry. In a decade we moved from vacuum tubes to transistors to thin-film devices. Examples of shrinkage on a gross scale are shown in the use of a single ferrite core to replace some twenty conventional (relatively speaking!) components.

Memory circuits once were mechanical relays or tube circuits. Briefly they were transistorized, and then ferrite cores. Magnetic thin-film circuits have now been developed, making random-access storage almost as compact as the sequential tape reel. As circuits grow smaller the major problem is manipulating them, or even seeing them, and a sneeze can be disastrous in today’s electronics plant.

One early journalistor was the molecular circuit. Many scientists and engineers working in the field scoffed at or derided such a visionary scheme. But the industry has indeed progressed into the integrated-circuit technology—a sort of halfway point—and is now on the fringe of actual functional block techniques in which the individual components are not discernible. Electronic switching and other action at the molecular level is close to reality, and hardheaded scientists now speak calmly of using a homogeneous block of material as a memory, scanning its three dimensions with the speed of light to locate any one or more of billions of bits of data in a few inches of volume.

Writing on the head of a pin was a prophetic bit of showmanship, and pinhead-size computers will not necessarily have pinhead mentalities. This progress toward a seemingly hopeless goal takes on an inexorable quality when the writings of von Neumann are compared with the state of the art today. Starting out much faster but much larger than similar elements of the brain, computer components have been made even faster while simultaneously shrinking dramatically toward the dimensions necessary to produce quantitative equivalence. It happens that these goals work out well together, the one helping the other. Circuitry is now at the point where speed is ultimately dependent on that limiter of all physical activity, the speed of light, or of electrons through a conductor. Only by putting elements closer together can speed be increased; thus one quality is not achieved at the sacrifice of the other.

International Business Machines Corp.

This experimental “memory plane” consists of 135 cryotron devices built up in a 19-layer “sandwich.” Produced automatically, it is an example of continued shrinking of computer elements. ]

As an example of the progress being made toward speeding up computers, speakers at the recent Winter General Meeting of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers described a coming generation of “gigacycle” computers now on the drawing boards. Present electronic machines operate at speeds in the megacycle range, with 50 million cycles per second representing the most advanced state of the art. Giga means billion; thus the new round of computers will be some thousand times as fast as those now operating.

Among the firms who plan such ultraspeed computers are RCA, IBM, and Sperry Rand Corporation. To achieve such a great increase in speed requires faster electronic switches. Transistors have been improved, and more exotic devices such as tunnel diodes, thin-film cryotrons, magnetic thin-films, parametrons, and traveling-wave tubes are now coming into use. Much of the development work is being supported by the U.S. Bureau of Ships. Operational gigacycle computers are expected within two years!

Not just the brickmaker, but the architect too has been busy in the job of optimizing the computer. The science of bionics and the study of symbolic logic lead to better ways of doing things. The computer itself comes up with improvements for its next generation, making one part do the work of five, and eliminating the need for whole sections of circuitry. Most computers have a fixed “clock”; that is, they operate at a certain cyclic rate. Now appearing on the scene are “asynchronous” computers which don’t stand around waiting when one job is done, as their predecessors did.

One advanced notion is the “growing” of complex electronic circuitry, in which a completed amplifier, or array of amplifiers, is pulled from the crystal furnace much the way material for transistors is now grown. Pooh-poohed at first as ridiculous, the notion has been tried experimentally. Since a computer is basically a multiplicity of simple units, the idea is not far off at that. It is conceivable that crystal structure can be exploited to produce millions of molecules of the proper material properly aligned for the desired electronic action.

With this shrinking come the benefits of small size, low power consumption, low cost, and perhaps lower maintenance. The computer will be cheap enough for applications not now economically feasible. As this happens, what will the computer do for us tomorrow?

A figure of 7 per cent is estimated for the amount of paperwork the computer has taken over in the business world. Computer men are eyeing a market some five times that amount. It does not take a vivid imagination to decide that such a percentage is perhaps conservative in the extreme. Computer sales themselves promise to show a fourfold increase in the five-year period from 1960 to 1965, and in the past predictions have been exceeded many times.

As population grows and business expands in physical size and complexity, it is obvious that the computer and its data-processing ability will be called upon more and more. There is another factor, that of the internationalizing of business. Despite temporary setbacks of war, protective tariffs, insular tendencies, and the like, in the long run we will live in one integrated world shrunk by data links that can get information from here to there and back again so fast it will be like conversing with someone across the room. Already planners are talking worldwide computerized systems.

As a mathematical whiz, the computer will relieve us of our money worries. Coupled with the credit card, perhaps issued to us at birth, a central computer will permit us to make purchases anywhere in the world and to credit our account with wages and other income. If we try to overdraw, it may even flash a warning light as fast as we put the card in the slot! This project interests General Dynamics researchers.

Of more importance than merely doing bookkeeping is the impact the computer will have on the planning and running of businesses. Although it is found in surveys that every person thinks computer application reaches to the level just below his in the management structure, pure logic should ultimately win out over man’s emotional frailties at all levels. Operations research, implemented by the computer, will make for more efficient businesses. Decisions will increasingly be made not by vice-presidents but by digital computers. At first we will have to gather the necessary information for these electronic oracles, but in time they will take over this function themselves.

Business is tied closely to education, and we have had a hint of the place the computer will make for itself in education. The effect on our motivation to learn of the little need for much learning will be interesting. But then, is modern man a weaker being because he kills a tiger with a high-powered rifle instead of club or bare hands—or has no need to kill the tiger in the first place?