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“Technology,” Time, April 2, 1965, p. 86. Courtesy TIME; Copyright Time Inc., 1965.

Although recently invented, computers are rapidly transforming our civilization. “In a Chicago radio plant,” according to Walter Buckingham:

1000 radios a day now are assembled by two men where two hundred had been required before automation. The duPont Company, using a computer at M.I.T., solved in thirty hours a chemical problem that would have required one man, working forty hours a week for twenty years to do the arithmetic alone. At the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton an electronic computer works out weather predictions in three hours that would take one man with an adding machine three centuries. In these last two cases, the job would not have been practical or economical to tackle without automation.

Walter Buckingham, Automation (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), pp. 27–28.

A bakery is being automated so that grain delivered to the silo is not touched by human hands until the loaves of bread are ready for delivery. One bakery run by one man could supply the needs of an entire state.

A local union with 1,300 members in 1959 had only 350 in 1963. Soon their plant will be automated further, and there will be only twenty-five workers, producing twice as much as before. Union leaders today are desperately worried about the livelihood of their members. Nevertheless, one union is automating its headquarters and reducing the staff from sixty to only six girls. When quizzed about this apparent contradiction, the union official explained that, “Business is business.”

Cybernation

Cybernation has been described as the wedding of automated machines with computers. When you equip a factory with automated machinery that is controlled by a computer, you have taken the work out of production. There is little for people to do but turn the machinery on, step aside, and let it do the work.

For example, an automated cleaning fluid plant will have machines that mix and bottle the stuff. When cybernated, this plant will use a computer that is electrically connected to every machine, every storage bin, and every operating mechanism in the entire plant. The computer will have at all times full data on what is happening throughout the plant. It will digest this information and give instructions continuously to keep all parts of the plant operating at maximum efficiency. It will have a better grasp of what is happening second by second throughout the entire factory than any boss could possibly have. It never takes a coffee break or goes to the bathroom. The computer that controls this cybernated cleaning fluid plant will, among other things, send out orders for chemicals, bottles, labels, and other materials before they are needed. It will automatically shut down the plant or speed up the production depending on the need for the product. The computer will quickly spot any breakdown and order repairs instantly. It will maintain a continuous inventory.

Cybernation means that automated machines do all the work with a computer as the boss. The computer “boss” coordinates all activities in the plant so that no executives, secretaries, foremen, or other supervisory personnel are needed. A self-repairing, cybernated factory may operate 24 hours a day, 365 days per year without a single human. If a human were present, he would probably spend his time looking at dials and fighting boredom. The small crew that even today operates a modern cybernated oil refinery could do their work in dinner jackets and white gloves without soiling them!

“Ultimate automation based on atomic power,” said Albert Einstein, “will make our modern industry as primitive and outdated as the stone age man looks to us today.” It is possible to build an automobile plant in which the raw materials are automatically put in one end and shiny automobiles run out another end, untouched by human hands. Cybernated systems that use almost no human labor can be developed to produce everything we use from the food we eat to the homes we live in.

Goods and Services Without Labor

Now, what does cybernation do to the shirt that we previously discussed which might take one hundred hours to produce without machines? If all raw materials are mined, raised, or gathered by cybernated machinery, and if shirts are produced in a cybernated factory without human beings, just how much labor is involved in the production of a shirt? It is conceivable that only five seconds of human time per shirt might be enough. Further improvements might get this below one second per shirt. How much would a shirt be worth under these circumstances? Five cents? One cent? One-tenth of a cent? Would it be worthwhile even to worry about charging for a shirt if there were practically no human labor involved in its production or distribution?

Since any task done by human minds and human hands can theoretically be cybernated on a repetitive basis, the advance of modern technology will almost eliminate the human labor cost of services. Services such as dry cleaning are now being automated. In the future haircuts, manicures, beauty parlor services, laundry, and the servicing of automobiles will be performed on a cybernated basis. The ability of cybernated machines has been described by Donald N. Michael:

Cybernated systems perform with a precision and a rapidity unmatched in humans. They also perform in ways that would be impractical or impossible for humans to duplicate. They can be built to detect and correct errors in their own performance and to indicate to men which of their components are producing the error. They can make judgments on the basis of instructions programmed into them. They can remember and search their memories for appropriate data, which either has been programmed into them along with their instructions or has been acquired in the process of manipulating new data. Thus, they can learn on the basis of past experience with their environment. They can receive information in more codes and sensory modes than men can. They are beginning to perceive and to recognize.

Donald W. Michael, “Cybernation: The Silent Conquest” (Santa Barbara,