In his historical analyses, Ensmenger does a great job at looking to the greater social environment while looking at a particular phenomenon. For instance, his crtitical -- and, for that matter, ironical -- view of the ad in the New Yorker when it describes the job as being of a "new and dynamic field", and he adds: what job doesn't say that?
I especially like the way in which he depicts the need of the computer industry to devise the 'ideal' profile for a computer programmer. My question is: did they know it back then? It's quite straightforward the assumption that one must enjoy (and be able to understand) logical operations. And, as a side activity, those who enjoy mathematical puzzles may very well enjoy composing. But weren't those who replied to that ad about to be tamed by the needs of the computer companies -- IBM included?
The psychometric tools used by them to recruit people are a product of a certain period in the so called modern age, in which it seemed like science would solve all the problems of mankind. Therefore, anything that was 'scientific' per se, which includes a machine to open cans instead of the traditional can opener, was regarded as intrinsically better for whatever task it was supposed to perform. It reminds me of a certain 'battle' in the history of philosophy. Between the XVIII and XIX centuries, two German thinkers had opposing views of reality that complemented each other beautifully, but were radically different in direction. Hegel believed that the the super-structure -- the 'idea' -- was the basis for the construction of reality. Karl Marx believed the opposite: that the infrastructure was the ground for what was called reality. (This is my description of their views, feel free to comment/agree/disagree).
This opposition has fueled many debates in the past 150 years. But far from being a fork on the road of thought, this opposition and the various theories that followed it give us the opportunity to look at various phenomena and see their multiple implications. In the case of Ensmenger's studies, what this makes me think is about the trial and error process of defining the actual role (rather than the profile) of the computer programmer, and the consequences of that. As he mentions at the end of his Chess Player, Music-Lovers, and Mathematicians chapter, the programmer became a somewhat powerful figure in the companies, and his position in the labor relations within a company became a 'threat' to other people, especially those they were supposed to help by writing software. I see here the same conflict of the two philosophers: the computer programmer is the materializer of an idea, or is he the idealizer of a matter? He is to put in computer language what the manager or anyone above him tells that needs to be done. In that sense, the advertised need for a "lively imagination" was no more than a game to be played by others. All the same, he is to have a dialog with the machine and use his imagination and mental ability to guide a command through the transistors of the computer, bypassing its restrictions, dealing with its idiosyncrasies, negotiating with its unmovable structure, and still coming out with a tangible result. That requires even more than a "lively imagination", but rather a sense of transcendency into a meta reality, in this case that of the electrons.
Wouldn't a philosopher be a good computer programmer?
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