Government
SESSION 4B PAPER 3
There will, of course, be many problems to be solved before these tasks can be regarded as satisfactorily completed, and before we can speak with confidence out of experience. But these problems do not appear to have any fundamentally insuperable content. The difficul-- ties are manmade rather than intrinsic. They originate in part from the difficulty of adjusting the organisms of office life to new rhythms, new environments, new relationships, in part from imperfect understanding and appreciation of the power and range of new techniques, and in part from a lack of perception of the limitations and deficiencies of these systems. We may reasonably suppose that, during the course of the next five years, these difficulties will be overcome and that, throughout Government Departments and Industry, there will be a growing number of installations at work on these jobs. With this perhaps over--simplified premise, it is not too early to start thinking about a possible future form of A.D.P. in Government Departments in, say, ten or fifteen years' time.
SESSION 4B PAPER 2 THE MECHANIZATION OF LITERATURE SEARCHING
I am quite ready to subscribe to the already mentioned slogan that "whatever a human being can do,an appropriate machine can do, too"; but I do this only because.I regard the slogan as utterly trivial. At the moment, I am not talking about what maohines could do in principle but only about what actually existing or blueprinted machines could do, and it Is with regard to these that I utter my definite opinions. If someone wishes to write sciencefiction about information-processing centres of the (undetermined) future, let him do so and I shall discuss it with him over a glass of beer and even offer some startling suggestions of my own. If he is interested in improving the literature search process today, I would strongly advise him to forget about mechanizing abstracting or indexing. May I add that it is with a good amount of sorrow that I have come to this conclusion which is quite counter, to my temperament and my convictions (never published) of a few years ago.
SESSION 4B PAPER 1
Dr. Lucien Mehl, born 1919 in Paris, studied at the University, Paris where he obtained his degrees in Philosophy and Law, and a Diploma of Advanced Studies in Political Economy and at the National School of Administration. He is now'Maitre des Requetesi to the Council of State and Director of external training at the National School of Administration. He is a member of the International Fiscal Association, the International Cybernetics Association and the French Operational Research Society. He has published a number of articles on administrative science, law, cybernetics and operational research. INTRODUCTION I. It may seem an ambitious step to try to apply mechanization or automation to the legal sciences. However, a machine for processing information can be an effective aid in searching for sources of legal information, in developing legal argument, in preparing the decision of the administrator or judge, and finally in checking the coherence of solutions arrived at.
Mechanisation of Thought Processes
Biology seems to be a science in its own right, or set of sciences having common aims, and so it should have its own language and explanatory concepts; yet when any specifically biological concept is suggested and used as an explanatory concept it seems to be unsatisfactory and even mystical. There are many biological concepts of this kind: Purpose, Drive, elan vital, Entelechy, Gestalten.* Physicists and engineers seem, on the other hand, to have clearly defined concepts having great power within biology.