The paper examines the extent to which a less mechanistic approach may be possible and suggests limitations that may be imposed not only by human limitations but by difficulties of correspondence and significance between machine and manual situations. 1. INTRODUCTION LET us assume that automatic data processing (A.D.P.) can do the things that we are planning for it to do at present, such as payroll, stores accounting, and statistical analyses. 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.

TABLE OF CONTENTS FOR the two volumes of papers and discussions of papers from the 1959 conference held at the National Physical Laboratory, sometimes known as "The Teddington Conference". Officially these two volumes are the Proceedings of the Symposium on Mechanisation of Thought Processes. Many of the classics are downloadable separately, the remainder are available from the longer downloads of the complete volumes:Vol 1 = http://aitopics.org/sites/default/files/classic/TeddingtonConference/Mechanisation of Thought Processes Vol. 1.pdfVol. 2 = http://aitopics.org/sites/default/files/classic/TeddingtonConference/Mechanisation of Thought Processes Vol. 2.pdfTeddington Conference

IBM Journal of Research and Development 2(1) pp. 1-13

Proceedings of the Symposium on the Mechanisation of Thought Processes.Teddington, Middlesex, England: National Physical Laboratory.

Psychological Review, Vol. 65, pp. 386 ff.

Report VG-1196-G-1, Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory, Buffalo, NY

A description of a theory of problem-solving in terms of information processes amenable for use in a digital computer. The postulates are: "A control system consisting of a number of memories, which contain symbolized information and are interconnected by various ordering relations; a number of primitive information processes, which operate on the information in the memories; a perfectly definite set of rules for combining these processes into whole programs of processing." Examples are given of how processes that occur in behavior can be realized out of elementary information processes. The heuristic value of this theory is pertinent to theories of learning, perception, and concept formation. Psychological Review, March, 65(3):151-166.

"We ask first whether we need a theory of creative thinking distinct from a theory of problem solving. Subject to minor qualifications, we conclude there is no such need -- that we call problem solving creative when the problems solved are relatively new and difficult. Next, we summarize what has been learned about problem solving by simulating certain human problem solving processes with digital computers. Finally, we indicate some of the differences in degreee that might be observed in comparing relatively creative with relative routine problem solving."RAND Corporation Paper P-1320, Santa Monica, Calif

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From the The Teddington Conference– D. V. Blake and A. M. Uttley (Eds.). Proceedings of the Symposium on Mechanisation of Thought Processes, National Physical Laboratory, Teddington, Middlesex, England, London: H. M. Stationary Office.