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I’ve also been having some arguments about what is the value of information in processing. I
made up an extreme example in a chemical plant totally operated by computer. Two pieces of
information come in simultaneously and one comes from a valve in the plant and says if you
don’t open it, the plant’s going to blow up. You have less than a minute to act, 100 lives and
$100 million plant. In the same instant comes information that Joe did two hours of overtime.
Which is the most valuable piece of information and what are the criteria?
Pantages:
Now that one’s obvious.
Hopper:
It should be within an organization. I found out how priorities are assigned today:
to the senior squeaky wheel, not to the most valuable information. And you can go on two
curves. [Drawing.] Dollar’s here. Events here. Value of the information goes up quite sharply
immediately after the event. But over time, it levels off, and eventually, it’s either replaced by a
new piece of information, or you send it to the historical files and keep it for the IRS. So the
value becomes something like that [diminishing line].
What about the cost of that information? It’s very low at the time of the event. The further you
get away from the event, the more it costs to get more information, the more it costs to store
and maintain it. There’s a crossover point there. That’s the point at which we should be getting it
out of our on-line files and we are not doing it. Because we don’t know our value and our cost.
And I am asking people to find out the value and cost of their information. Because all we are
doing now is leaving stuff in the on-line files. And they are mushrooming. The more you leave it
there, the more you slow it down. But the cost of those two curves when you get it out – no one
is even looking at that.
Pantages:
Their vision is limited….
Hopper:
Many people think they have virtual storage, but it was nothing but overlay.
The Navy’s Dilemma: Micros and Software Creation
[At this point, Richard Burdette, a Naval officer and in management within the Naval Data
Automation Command, enters her office. and they discuss the problems being created by
personnel who are acquiring their own computers and creating programs they need.]
Hopper:
Hey Burdette, come here and meet a friend of mine. You must have heard of
Dick Burdette. He’s got some good ideas too. We’ve been working together since I came back
from active duty in 1967.
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Richard Burdette: Hardware is cheaper than ever before, but software isn’t any cheaper. It’s
getting very expensive, it’s labor intensive, and you have the problem of people reinventing the
wheel.
Hopper:
But most of the stuff is Wang’s… they are using the software that comes with it.
Wang’s are the friendliest things you’ve ever seen.
Burdette:
You are thinking of word processors. I’m thinking of the micros and minis, where
people are innovating and doing their own things. And a lot of people are doing their own things
which are the same as everyone else’s own things. That’s the problem we’re having in the
Navy that we are concerned with.
Hopper:
Most of them aren’t spending much for the software.
Burdette:
It’s now almost invisible as to what they are spending because the user himself is
involved. You don’t call these people programmers anymore, but they are spending time
generating programs. That might be good because now the user can be responsible for his own
product.
Hopper:
I think that is good.
Burdette:
He knows what his requirements are. If he is educated enough to use a
computer, we might get programmers replaced?
Hopper:
Making it easier for people to get training. This – they are pushing – not to limit
the use of computers, but to get people into here and let them find out what they should require
and what they should know, etc. and then let them out on their own.
Burdette:
What do you think about what’s happening at Norfolk with the micro group?
Hopper:
What are they doing?
Burdette:
We set up a Center of Excellence for micros, for people to become extremely
knowledgeable in the technology. Act as consultants to the rest of the Navy, those people who
fall below the $10,000 threshold, who can go out and buy computers without permission.
Hopper:
She wants to put a $2,500 limit.
Burdette:
Ah so. The problem there is that none of these computers – if people did this
totally on their own – would be able to talk to each other. There is no standardization. The
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concept of the Center of Excellence – the group that we hope will be consulting to those who
don’t know much about computers – will provide an ad hoc type of standardization. Will give
them general guidance, so they can within a certain framework go out and get a certain kind of
machine that will talk to each other: Standard microprocessors that will handle the same
software, the same operating systems. And then we can share programs. If programs are
developed in one place or another place, one ship another ship, we can start to throw these
programs in a big library through the Center of Excellence hopefully. Then they will get to know
what’s available and people can come in and say, “Hey I want to do something but before I go
ahead and do it, do you have something?” We would be able to say yes we do, we have
systems-compatible machines. That’s a de facto standard at this point. But it’s not a real
standard because we have allowed these people to go out, under that threshold, carte blanche,
and get what they want.
I guess that’s why this gal from DOD is trying to put the clamps on it. Is that Scarlet Curry?
Hopper:
That’s the one. I’m trying to get her to soften it up. She’s writing it.
Pantages:
How do you solve that programming problem?
Hopper:
Most of them are doing something local, quick and dirty. If they aren’t going to
use it anywhere else, you don’t need it anywhere else.
Pantages:
Isn’t that a definition that has to be made before anyone gets uptight about it –
what information you don’t care about?
Hopper:
It’s a problem when you try to go in with an overall thing. The Philadelphia Naval
shipyard and San Diego shipyard were just totally different, because they were working on
different types of ships. The Newport one was even more different because they were the only
ones that had submarines to work with. So people were different, parts were different,
everything was different. So you were either going to make one huge mess or you were going to
specify it to the particular installation.
Pantages:
What about standard reporting?
Hopper:
It didn’t matter what they did to begin with as long as the reporting set was
coming. You can pull that off later anyway. That’s a separate program.
You’ve got these engineers getting these small computers, one step up from programmable
calculators. These aren’t going to be used anywhere else. They’re using it for what they do at
the moment. If you put everything in, you’ll have a colossal thing that no one can make use of.
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