DORIS [CODIL]
The Limitations of Existing Computers Techniques
Selected Quotations
by C. F. Reynolds
English Electric Computers – Internal Report
1968
The attached selected
quotations emphasise some of the limitations of existing computer techniques
and their cost. They also point to the areas in which it is believed that DORIS
[CODIL] will be of greatest value.
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“Machines
can't think,” said he, “because stupid humans don't know how to teach them to
think. We try and teach them as we think machines should be taught,
and it doesn't work.”
He
stressed the fact that humans use knowledge acquired from literally millions of
sources .to do what we call thinking, but that we do not yet
understand the relative values; of tradeoffs between logic and knowledge.
Until we have investigated that a bit further, our machines will not 'think'
we1l.
Dr. Seymour Papert, M.I.T., Speaking at the 1st Annual Symposium of the American
Society for Cybernetics, 26th October 1967. Quoted. in Computers and Automation, December 1967, page
18.
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“Although in a great many places information
is still being stored. on ordinary filing cards. ... the development of the computer
has presented an attractive but deceptive means of handling information. I use
'deceptive' quite deliberately, because the power of the computer has 1ed many
to assume that the machine will somehow undertake for us the intellectual tasks
of understanding, analysing, and piecing together required information from a
mass of other information. ... ... Because all these intellectual processes are
to a large extent carried out without clearly specified conscious procedures,
they have received little detailed examination and have indeed been largely
overlooked. With the increasing use of machines, this necessity of intellectual
operations has again been overlooked, perhaps because their role in manual methods
was insufficiently appreciated, perhaps because the difficulties of improving
intellectual methods seemed too formidable, or perhaps because too naive a view
was taken of the capabilities of the machine.”
"If
the computer is indeed the appropriate machine for our purposes (and it is, of
course, the only available machine with sufficient power at present), then new techniques would appear to be needed ...
... Is it possible that a special purpose machine of a different type will
eventually have to be devised for information storage and retrieval? For my
part, I can only hope to make clear the semantic features of information
handling. The rest I leave to the electronic engineers.”
J. Farradane,
City University, London, “The
Problems of Input and their Inplications in Mechanization”, in Information Storage and Retrieval,
Volume 4,t page 251, 1968.
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The Systems Dilemma
“The ultimate success or failure of computer systems at present is
overdependent on the problem definition and system design stage, The desire to simplify systems leads to a conflict
between the needs of people and the computer specialist's interest in
containing the project within present methodology. It is at this stage that the weight of Scientific
Methodology and Management Theory is thrown at users to intimidate then quite
unreasonably and with disastrous effects into a definition of their needs and
function. It is at this point that so often the die is cast in favour of assumptions
which lead to irrelevant systems. The flaw which underlies this approach
is to treat the design of information systems as an engineering project with
fixed design parameters. This is the last way it should be treated, however,
for its purpose is to make a company responsive, flexible, and aware of its
commercial situation. It is unlikely to do this without these
characteristics being implicit in its design. This requires
development to be carried out at a higher level than “application systems”,
indeed at a level which can accommodate changes without extensive
restrurcturing.”
Wesley
M. Davies, Systems Technology
Department, The Steel Company of Wales
Ltd. “The Conceptional Stage in
Planning a Company Information System.”. Read at I.F.I.P.
1968, page F.1.
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“We are pushing against the limits of complexity that we know how to
handle. Never before have
programming projects of such a degree of complexity been seriously attempted.
as those that occur today in software development and in a few specific
applications.”
“Computing
has many frontiers; the one of speed was emphasised earlier. But many programs
that tax the speed of our fastest computers can be programmed with a moderate
effort. They are of the same kind of problems as those for which computers were
originally designed: 1ogically simple but computationally hard. However,
we also run into problems that are commputationally light but also so complex
that we do not know how to design, document, and debug them. This kind of
problem is relatively new. But since we also face these
difficulties when we are trying to expand the use of the traditional scientific
computation type (short code, long run) - problems that are potentially among
the most challenging applications of computers – this complexity
barrier may well be the most important limitation that the computer field will
be subject to in the immediate future.”
J. Nievergelt, “Computers and Computing - Past,
Present and Future". I.E.E.E. Spectrum, January 1968.
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“Within
the last year of two the “Total Systems” philosophy, which has held sway for
over half a decade, has come under heavy attack. In an article published early
in 1965 it was suggested that the pressure to integrate has gone too far; that
systems designers were so busy trying to produce such completely integrated
systems that they were getting nowhere, and indeed. where results were being
produced they were both too cumbersome and too inflexible to be of much lasting
benefit. Like the leviathans of pre-history the seeds of their destruction lay
in the inertia of their vast bulk”.
A.G. Barclay, C.A., “An Examination of Three
Causes of Limitations in Present Computer Applications”, The
Accountants Magazine, December
1967, page 593.
Reference is to: John Dearden, “How
to Organise Information Systems”, Harvard Business Review,
March/April 1965, page 65
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“We
should be positively looking for and developing programming methods that do
a1low inconsistency, redundancy, ambiguity and incompleteness; we should
recognise that these seem to be vices only because the error-prone techniques
of procedural programming make them so.”
“But
allowing that we need. no longer call them vices doesn't in itself make then
virtues. It would be ludicrous to complicate our dp systems by wantonly
introducing confusion ancl inconsistency into situations where none existed
before; and we must recognise that some problems can only be solved by extreme
rigor and precision. My theme is concerned with those situations where
confusion and inconsistency are inherent elements of the problem and where we cannot
hope to write successful programs unless we are able to deal properly with
these factors.”
M. A.Jackson, John Hosklms and Co Ltd., "The
Need for Imprecision”, Datamation, February 1968, page
143.
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“Ultimately
all computer production is meant for human consumption in some form or another.
Will it be possible to have machines working for us and having them doing
things for us, then it must be simple to control them. I
would almost say that sinplicity is the keynote of my talk, In many of the
present day programming languages and their compilers this is not reflected.
There is a seemingly natural tendency to put all features into a compiler that
arise out of some pragmatic need, instead of a tendency to unify the concepts.
One provides the user with a rich choice of possibilities. It is 1ike providing
a machine with 16 index registers because 16 wi1l perform better than one
single. But a little sophistications and generality make available all
locations as index registers. I can express this in the 1aw of good numbers.
There are but three good numbers: zero, one and all. Any choice in between has
that arbitrary element: why just 16?"
W. L. Van Der Poe1, “The Software Crisis, Some
Thoughts and Outlooks”, I.F.I.P. 1968
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“McClure
spoke as a programming expert and listed some of the things that we had. not
done with programming languages. His list included:
Combination of simplicity and generality
Generation of efficient code
Having an influence on machine design
A deeper understanding of data
Simpler operating systems
Setter de-bugging facilities
An understanding of command languages.”
Robert M. McClure, Scientific Contro1 Corporation,
Da1las, “Whither Programming Languages”, Panel Discussion at Fall
Joint Computer Conference, 1967 as reported by Dr. Pinkerton in diary
note dated 12.12.67.
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“In
terms of technical achievement, the computer revolution in U.S. business is
outrunning expectations. In terms of economic payoff on new applications, it is
rapidly losing momentum. Such is the evidence of a new study by McKinsey and
Company of computer systems management in 36 major companies.”
“From
a profit standpoint, our findings indicate, computer efforts in all but a few
exceptional companies are in real, if often unacknowledged, trouble. Faster,
costlier, more sophisticated. hardware; larger and increasingly costly computer
staffs, increasingly complex and ingenious applications: these are in evidence
everywhere. less and less in evidence, as these new applications proliferate,
are profitable results. This is the familiar phenomenon of diminishing returns.
But there is one crucial difference: As yet, the real profit potential of the
computer has barely begun to be tapped.”
“The
distribution of costs which go to make up total computer expenditures is,
however, fairly consistent among the companies participating in our study. Of
every $100,000 of total computer expenditures about $35,000 goes for hardware:
$30,000 for computer operations staff payroll; £15,000 for maintenance
programming (i.e. Keeping current systems updated); and the remaining $20,000
for development programming and other staff time devoted to new applications.”
McKinsey & Co., New York, “Unlocking the Computers Profit
Potential”, 1968
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