This was published in an abbreviated form as a review in Hibernia, May 1967. The editor cut the introductory bit where I tried to put information technology into the general technological context. I have restored the cuts. RJ April 2001.

The Computer in Society, Brian Murphy, published at 12/6d in the Great Society series by Anthony Blond, 50 Doughty Street, London WCl.

At present it is becoming evident that the processing of information is of increasing importance to society. This has reflected itself in the decline in the number of manual jobs and the increase in the number of administrative.

From the start of the 'industrial revolution' of the 1700s up to the second World War the dominant factor in economic progress was the application of technological development to the productive process itself. In this process, craft, technology and science interacted. Thus, for example, the discovery, at craft level, that coal could be used to smelt iron ore led to the need to dig deep mines which required to be pumped. This stimulated the development of the steam engine and the technology connected with it.

Originally craft-based, steam-engine technology became scientific with the development of the science of thermodynamics in the early 19th Century. Scientific understanding of the technology of the steam engine led to its development to the extent of mobility, so that transport was revolutionized by the railways.

Any economic structure involves, however, an information system as well as a productive process. The handling of information relating to raw materials, process and market constitute the management process. This process has remained basically at the craft level to the present day. It is, however, undergoing technological change at a rapid rate, but unlike the 'first industrial revolution' the technology of the 'second industrial revolution' is not craft-based but has been science-based from its inception. The methods of 'management science' are being imposed from without, under economic stress, on managements who are sometimes either hostile or rigidly conservative in their attitude.

This book is aimed at informing managers what is involved in the installation of a computer. Broadly speaking it is accurate and may have some measure of success. Some may be put off by the rather starry-eyed 'Readers Digest' attitude to technical progress that is evident in the sections which outline what (in principle) can be done. This attitude, however, does not dominate the book.

A number of lessons are worth underlining.

Firstly, no organisation should install a computer without a thorough analysis of its objectives and methods, revealing the existing information flow pattern and the lag times associated with each element. This analysis itself often gives rise to savings. The installation is then planned in such a way as to eliminate the lag times to which the operation of the Company is most sensitive.

Secondly, there must be full top management support and participation and personnel problems must be faced before they arise by a phased re-training program, taking middle management and unions into full confidence.

Thirdly, the Government needs to play a significant part in forcing the pace. This is beginning to be taken seriously in the UK since the inception of the Ministry of Technology, but is still held up by bureaucratic factors.

In contemporary Irish conditions it in evident that many of the early mistakes are being repeated. The basic 'don'ts' are:-

1) not to introduce a computer under the control of an existing departmental management (eg Accounts)

2) not to computerise an existing punched card system without system analysis, as procedures related to the old punched card system are usually dominated by system constraints rather than adapted to real system needs.

Indeed the Irish scene presents a number of opportunities for advanced computer applications which because of the small size of the economy are tractable as pilot schemes from which experience could be gained before going to a full scale European-size economy. We as a nation could be developing this ourselves, leaning on the manufacturers where necessary, and then selling our experience abroad as an 'invisible export'. We should have a National Computer Research Centre, possibly under the proposed National Council of Science, responsible for carrying out information system development, initially in the Civil Service and in conjunction with the State companies, ultimately on a consultancy basis with special consideration given to the need for reduction in management costs of small firms.

This development work would have also market value as an export of use to small firms in advanced economies as well as in other small economies less advanced than our own. Such work is not likely to be of interest to the European and American giant firms which are in the vanguard of computer utilisation. Much of this 'vanguard' work is solving of problems posed by organisational gigantism. On our scale we ought to be able to use the computer intelligently to solve real problems of economic value, without their being obscured by a mass of organisational complexity.

So far, however, our record has not been outstanding. In the Civil Service are the Revenue Commission and the Central Statistics Office. I have reason to suspect that most of the above 'dos' and 'don'ts' were not taken seriously. In the State companies the picture is uneven but possibly slightly better. In private industry the accounting machine approach predominates but in one or two firms an enlightened management seems to be adopting a 'total information system' approach.

The situation could be improved by deliberate State intervention, as in Britain, and by contriving for mobility of trained personnel for the purpose of spreading experience rapidly. A good systems analyst should be able to 'get around' without losing pension rights, and should be confident of returning to a defined function in his 'home base' after absence. (This is one of the book's conclusions; it is also my own).

In January of this year an Irish computer society was formed. Its initial membership is 135. Perhaps this is a good sign.

When submitting the review, I added a CV note as follows, which however Hibernia did not use. This was my attempt to get a bit of publicity for the existence of the CSTI, which did not in this case succeed. RJ April 2001.

Dr Roy Johnston, by training a physicist and mathematician, built a rudimentary computer himself to solve a data processing problem in the late fifties when working on nuclear physics in the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies. After a period in the UK he returned to Dublin in 1963 where he is currently engaged in economic model work with a major State company. A believer in an integrated approach to socio-economic problems as well as to science itself, he is currently Chairman of the interdisciplinary Council for Science and Technology in Ireland which is a voluntary body consisting of delegates nominated by a number of organised scientific or technological disciplines ranging from Architecture to Physics.

Some navigational notes:

Copyright Dr Roy Johnston 1999