“WHEN THE COMPUTER TAKES OVER THE OFFICE”— UPDATE Available to Purchase

Now that the computer has taken over the office and, incidentally, has changed the structure, contours, and dynamics of the business world, there is urgent need for a dispassionate assessment of what has been going on for the past quarter century and what is ongoing now, with the fateful 1984 a flip of the calendar away and the turn of the century not far off. An assessment of that kind would not have been possible in 1960, when the Harvard Business Review first printed the article, “When the Computer Takes Over the Office”. (Subsequently, it was distributed under the aegis of the University of California's Institute of Industrial Relations as part of their reprint series.) At the time, electronic data processing was still in its infancy and regarded as a mere timorous technological step beyond tried‐and‐true Hollerith systems. Talk of “takeover” must have seemed like an egregious flying in the face of conventional wisdom. What, after all, could be so threatening about a fast abacus? All it was doing was, presumably, cutting down paper work or speeding up paper flow. Then, as now, the electronics industry was self‐conscious about its public image and welcomed only praise for its noble contributions to society's wellbeing. Any intimation that automation was not an unmitigated blessing for all people was regarded as a manifestation of an unfriendly predisposition against progress, perhaps even subversive and un‐American. One manufacturer went so far as to demand, in an open letter to the press, that the editors of the Harvard Business Review repudiate the Hoos article. A reply was in order and mine was simple: it is not my business to peddle nor to soft‐pedal automation.