Edmund Storms wrote:
That's true, but ancient economies were pretty complicated!
What standard would you use to judge? Surely, past economies were not as
complicated as what we see today.
I do not know much about economics, but premodern manufacturing was, in
some ways, even more complicated than most present day versions, because it
required so much manual expertise and input from so many different people.
A good example is the 18th century British chronometer (marine navigation
clock). The complexity, quality control, the number of people involved, and
cost to manufacture rivaled that of the minicomputer circa 1980.
Until modern computers came along, all recording had to be done by
hand. Of course methods were developed to make simple calculations.
Not just simple ones! Remarkably complex calculations were performed
manually, by coordinated groups of hundreds of clerks. Good examples are
the US Census Bureau statistics from 1860, which came in four volumes with
hundreds of tables, and the lunar navigation tables produced by the British
Admiralty. For that matter, the first atomic bombs was developed using only
human "computers" equipped with mechanical calculating machines.
An interesting point is that many of the techniques used in computer data
processing evolved directly from the manual techniques used by live clerks.
This is reflected in computer terminology such as "ledger," "register"
"record" and "index." The ISAM index algorithms I implemented back in 1980
were derived directly from manual systems still used to shelve books in
libraries.
The business models used today use equations that would take years to
solve using these tools.
And for that reason, back in 1860 (and 1940) they used more elegant and
clever equations and tools, that still gave reasonably good answers. My
mother, for example, used a slide rule to the end of her days.
The [1880] data took 9 years to process. Since the census must be taken
every 10 years, according to the Constitution, that was the limit.
Nine years to process just a few questions!!
No, lots of questions. To start with they recorded a fairly large set of
basic information for every citizen: age, sex, race, national origin,
address (town, county, state), trade (I think), and before 1865, legal
status (free or slave -- as mandated in the Constitution). I do not think
the basic census form today is much more complicated. They broke this down
into six major tallies, with various actuarial of tables and so on.
Furthermore, starting in 1810 the Congress ordered the Census Bureau to
collect more extensive information from some people and most commercial
establishments, relating mainly to commerce. The Congress mandated "a
statistical report . . . covering the kind, quantity, and value of goods
manufactured, and the number of manufacturing establishments in each State,
Territory, district, and county" for 25 broad categories of manufacture,
and 220 kinds of goods. In 1820 this was expanded to include data on "the
location of establishments, 14 additional inquiries elicited information on
raw materials employed (kind, quantity, and cost), number of employees
(men, women, and boys and girls), machinery (whole quantity and kind of
machinery and quantity of machinery in operation), expenditures (capital,
wages, and contingent expenses), and production (nature and names of
articles manufactured, value, demand, and sales)."
Believe me, it only got more complicated after that!
See: http://www.census.gov/epcd/www/pdf/giq97/GIQ_history.pdf
And if I may add a blatant plug for statistics and the Census Bureau, the
U.S. has an old and proud tradition of gathering and publishing accurate,
detailed data about every aspect of our society, such as public health,
manufacturing, employment and so on. This transparency is one of our great
strengths as a society. Traditionally, only the U.K. and France have been
as forthright.
The information being stored about everyone, on which taxes, employment,
and credit are based, would not have been possible until recently.
On the contrary, the Constitution mandated that the data be collected for
everyone, in order to divvy up the representatives in Congress, and to
impose taxes and distribute benefits fairly. That is why they established
the Bureau in the first place. You cannot have democracy without good,
solid, detailed statistics, and the U.S. had 'em starting in 1790.
It took a lot of manual work to do an in-depth analysis of the data sets,
for things like actuarial tables, but 19th-century statisticians did
impressive work.
No doubt they were impressive given the tools available. What would you
expect to happen to society if the computer had not been discovered?
I know exactly what would have happened. The cost of the 1890 and 1900
census would have gone through the roof, and the Congress would have
demanded someone come up with a mechanical solution. That is exactly why
and how the computer was invented, by Herman Hollerith. There were several
competing designs but his was best. His company evolved the IBM corporation.
When a society feels a strong need for a tool, and the tool is technically
within its grasp (meaning it does not require any fundamental new
discovery), development becomes inevitable. The ancient Egyptians felt they
must have pyramids, so they devised ways to build them. The British in 1750
decided they must have accurate chronometers, so they created a high tech
industry to supply them. In 1890, the U.S. Congress understood that the
survival of democracy depended upon mechanical data processing, and it
decreed that it would pay for this technology, so inevitably someone
invented it. That does not mean the Congress could today decree that
someone figure out the secret of cold fusion. The Hollerith machines were
clever, elegant and well designed, but they did not require any fundamental
breakthroughs in physics, mathematics or electricity. They were based on
existing technology and well-understood principles.
On this issue, Arthur Clarke went even farther out on a limb than I do. He
wrote: "Anything that is theoretically possible will be achieved in
practice, no matter what the technical difficulties, if it is desired
greatly enough."
- Jed
