Systems, Experts, and Computers: The Systems Approach in Management and Engineering, World War II and After (Dibner Institute Studies in the History of Science and Technology)

This groundbreaking book charts the origins and spread of the systems movement. After World War II, a systems approach to solving complex problems and managing complex systems came into vogue among engineers, scientists, and managers, fostered in part by the diffusion of digital computing power. Enthusiasm for the approach peaked during the Johnson administration, when it was applied to everything from military command and control systems to poverty in American cities. Although its failure in the social sphere, coupled with increasing skepticism about the role of technology and "experts" in American society, led to a retrenchment, systems methods are still part of modern managerial practice. This groundbreaking book charts the origins and spread of the systems movement. It describes the major players including RAND, MITRE, Ramo-Wooldrige (later TRW), and the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis—and examines applications in a wide variety of military, government, civil, and engineering settings. The book is international in scope, describing the spread of systems thinking in France and Sweden. The story it tells helps to explain engineering thought and managerial practice during the last sixty years. Contents Introduction • Thomas P. Hughes and Agatha C. Hughes 1 Automation’s Finest Hour: Radar and System Integration in World War II • David A. Mindell 2 The Adoption of Operations Research in the United States during World War II • Erik P. Rau 3 From Concurrency to Phased Planning: An Episode in the History of Systems Management • Stephen B. Johnson 4 System Reshapes the Corporation: Joint Ventures in the Bay Area Rapid Transit System, 1962–1972 • Glenn Bugos 5 Planning a Technological Nation: Systems Thinking and the Politics of National Identity in Postwar France • Gabrielle Hecht 6 A Worm in the Bud? Computers, Systems, and the Safety-Case Problem • Donald MacKenzie 7 Engineers or Managers? The Systems Analysis of Electronic Data Processing in the Federal Bureaucracy • Atsushi Akera 8 The World in a Machine: Origins and Impacts of Early Computerized Global Systems Models • Paul N. Edwards 9 The Medium Is the Message, or How Context Matters: The RAND Corporation Builds an Economics of Innovation, 1946–1962 • David A. Hounshell 10 Out of the Blue Yonder: The Transfer of Systems Thinking from the Pentagon to the Great Society, 1961–1965 • David R. Jardini 11 The Limits of Technology Transfer: Civil Systems at TRW, 1965–1975 • Davis Dyer 12 From Operations Research to Futures Studies: The Establishment, Diffusion, and Transformation of the Systems Approach in Sweden, 1945–1980 • Arne Kaijser and Joar Tiberg 13 The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, the TAP Project, and the RAINS Model • Harvey Brooks and Alan McDonald 14 RAND, IIASA, and the Conduct of Systems Analysis • Roger E. Levien 15 How a Genetic Code Became an Information System • Lily E. Kay Notes on Contributors Index After World War II, a systems approach to solving complex problems and managing complex systems came into vogue among engineers, scientists, and managers, fostered in part by the diffusion of digital computing power. Enthusiasm for the approach peaked during the Johnson administration, when it was applied to everything from military command and control systems to poverty in American cities. Although its failure in the social sphere, coupled with increasing skepticism about the role of technology and "experts" in American society, led to a retrenchment, systems methods are still part of modern managerial practice.This groundbreaking book charts the origins and spread of the systems movement. It describes the major players -- including RAND, MITRE, Ramo-Wooldrige (later TRW), and the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis -- and examines applications in a wide variety of military, government, civil, and engineering settings. The book is international in scope, describing the spread of systems thinking in France and Sweden. The story it tells helps to explain engineering thought and managerial practice during the last sixty years. Examining, as this volume does, "the spread of the systems approach," suggests that some coherent approach to systems emerged within engineering before it diffused into other disciplines such as social policy and urban planning.