Southeastern Massachusetts University - Scrimshaw Yearbook (North Dartmouth, MA)

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fl both predictable and unpredictable, in many parts of the existing socioeconomic system and culture. It is now clear that the impact ofthe computer is destroying the industrial-age balance between the economy and the society. We continue, however, to assume that after a period of apparent disorganization, a new favorable socioeconomic balance will become evident, we have further assumed that JT it becomes clear that a satisfactory balance is not emerging, we will be able to intervene at the last moment ot correct unfavorable trends. These kinds of assumptions are analogous to 'the pre-cybernetics industrial-age economic theories of laissez-faire and, later of pre-crisis intervention in the economy. But these theories were based on the imposibility of prediction and resulted in the establishment of a polity of remedial, not preventative, action. Today, the avialability of the computer enables us to spot trends long before they would otherwise be visible, to carry out the necessary discussion and to prepare any required programs before the need for action develops. We can thus use these systems to control their own effects. Using information provided by computer systems, we can speed up the observation-discussion-action process so that we can keep up with the developments in our own technology So long as we preserve our present socioeconomic system, internal economic stability is only possible if the amount poeple and institutions are willing and able to buy rises a fast as the amount that we are able to produce. It is necessary that effective demand keep up with potential supply. This necessity follows from the fact that the viability of our present scarcity socioeconomic system is based on a very simple relationship: it is assumed that it is possible for the overwhelming - proportion of those seeking jobs to find them and that the income received from these jobs will enable the job-holder to act as an adequate consumer. The successful functioning of the present socioeconomic system is therefore completely dependent on an ability to provide enough jobs to go round. a continuing failure to achieve this invalidates our present mechanism for income distribution, which operates only so long as scarcity persists. So long as the present socioeconomic system is not changed, abundance is a ,cancer and the various parts of the system must continue to do their best to inhibit its growth.

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The truth, the central stupendous truth, about developed countries today is that they can have-in anything but the shor'test run-the kind and scale of resources they decide to have .... It is no longer resources that limit decwons. It is the decision that makes the resources. This is the fundamental revolutionary change-perhaps the most revolutionary mankind has ever known. Third, the drive to eliminate the human mind from repetitive activities results from the fact that the computer rs a far more efficient worker than already we know that the production worker can be replaced by the cybernated system, that the. computer controls inventory more effectively than the manager, that the computer handles bank accounts far more cheaply than the clerk. These however, are primitive developments: in the near future we will see that the computer can take over any structured task, that is to say, any task where the decrion-making rules can be set out ui advance. Thus for example, the computer will take over the process of granting most types ofbank loan, the analysis of stock portfolios and the process of odd-lot trading. on Wall Street. The last application is perhaps particularly noteworthy, for it will replace a group of people whose median income is aroundS50,000 a year. Fourth, the umherent organizational drive of the computer withuz a cybemetics system: The setting up of computer systems is a response to a need to increase economic efficiency or to rationalize operations, but as computer systems become fully operative, a drive emerges toward the reorganization, for purposes of compatability, of interacting systems and institutions. The greater the number of areas of computer application, the greater the number of areas of computer application, the greater the force -behind There is now quite clearly a trend toward the emergence of a total computer system organized for maximum efficiency in tems of immediate tasks. Changes resulting from these four drives have already begun. The transformation taking place around us should, therefore, not be regarded as a process involving the occurrences of random, isolated non-predictable events, but rather be urgently studied to determine what trends are developing. In addition, we must always keep in mind that change 'brought about in one part of the system will be accompanied by other changes, . '21 UN.. I 4 3:11 . 6 ' N ,fyfy V -,,Z?.vv.?LQ,,'f:s., . r M 'L 1 x ,V if., .L W., 'fr , 5.31 hi its

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It is for this reason that businesses of all sizes, economists of almost all persuasions, and politicians of all parties agree that it is necessary to keep effective demand growing as fast as potential supply, that those who are still able to act as adequate consumers, because they are still abtaining sufficient incomes from their jobs, be encouraged to consume more and more of the kind of products that the economic system is presently organized to produce. Our economy is dependent on compulsive consumption in the words of Professor Gomberg, and manufacturers spend ever-increasing sums on consumer seduction to persuade the consumer that he needs an ever-wider variety of products. All of us have our favorite story about the evils of advertising. But a new dimension is being added to the diabolic in advertising by means of new techniques using programmed computers and automatic equipment: for example, a system has already been developed and -is presently in use, at least on the West Coast and in Washington, where, in .ga 'given neighborhood every phone will ring'and.af tape-recorded sales message will be played when the phone ispicked up., I 3 7 Pressures from the attempt -to keep ,supply and ,demand in balance not limited to the mere constant irritative pressure to be aware of sales messages: there is a second type, of consequence which is even more serious for itacts. to prevent any effective control of the drive toward unlimited productive power. Paul A. Samuelson, a highly respected conventional economist, has expressed the new reality in the following extreme terms: In the super-affluent society, where nothing is any longer useful, the greatest threat in the world comes from anything which undermines our addiction to expenditures on things that are useless. It is for this reason that it is difficult to close down obsolete military bases, to limit cigarette consumption, in fact to slow down any form of activity which might in any way create demand or jobs. In these conditions, the need for ever-higher demand will almost inevitably have priority over the needsdescribed by the social worker, the sociologist and the philosopher.. , ' V p ' Whatever we do, we can only succeed in I-delaying the inevitable: theattempt to keep demand growing as fast as supply and thus create enough conventional jobs will inevitably exceed our capacity to Create jobs. e l Q i Even while we continue our effort to maintain the present 'socioeconomic system, the situation will deteriorate. We will'see a continuation of the trends of the past years during which the position of the unskilled and the uneducated has worsened, the plight 'of the poor has become ever more hopeless. Professor Charles Killingsworth, one of the leading experts on unemployment statistics, has shown that in 1950, the unemployment rate for the poorest educated group was four times the rate for the most educated group, by 1960 the 'real' rate for the bottom group was 12 times the rate for the top group. In a parallel , I tr W. , 'Sf if E e xg!