In Babbage’s Victorian England, the word “computer” had a meaning totally different from its current one. A computer was a worker who earned a living by performing mathematical calculations related to mathematically involved tasks such as the compilation of navigation charts, mathematical tables and astronomical tables. After the invention of the Difference Engine and other calculating machines, the task of calculation underwent mechanization and thus was born today’s term “computer”, an anthropomorphism of the earlier (human) computer.
This was a time when England was going through the Industrial Revolution – a process by which human (physical) labour was replaced by machine labour. But what was unexpected was the possibility of a machine to replace mental labour. The idea of a machine being able to “think” was not to be readily accepted.
On substituting mental work with a mechanism for the same, the terms “intelligence”, “labour” and “factory” had to be redefined. According to Schaffer, the intelligence of machines comes from the invisibility of the very labour force that drives them. This would make it seem that the machine is “thinking by itself”. This would portray “labour” as simply a means to an end, that is, the product or, in this case, the result of the mathematical calculation. In turn, a “factory” had to be a network of such bodies and minds working together to execute a specific task. Quoting Ure’s definition of the factory from Schaffer,
…he defined the factory both as 'a vast automaton, composed of various mechanical and intellectual organs,…, all of them being subordinated to a self-regulated moving force' and as 'the combined operation of many orders of work-people ...in tending with assiduous skill a series of productive machines'.
It is interesting to note that Babbage placed more importance in the outcome of labour than on labour itself. He argued that the end result would be the same, whether done by a machine or by a human. He drew a parallel between the work done by a machine and the power consumed, and the wages consumed by an equivalent number of skilled labourers. This analogy quantified human labour – something which was previously thought of as immeasurable. Hitherto, the attentive crafting body was described in terms of the skill it possessed. To place human labour and mechanised labour on the same scale and establish them as comparable entities was, to say the least, a novel idea. This made it possible to describe artisan skill in terms of its wage equivalent.
With the advent of industrialization and capitalism, individuals who owned small enterprises such as a weaving loom were forced to give up their business and instead work in a factory on the capitalist’s loom. With this, constant supervision and control was imposed on the labourers to ensure production. The factory was divided into different units, each performing a particular task in accordance with an organized and efficient plan, much like the process in the Analytical Engine where different parts of a bigger calculation were fed into different components of the machine and executed simultaneously for greater calculation speed. This process broke down huge, seemingly impossible tasks into smaller, manageable tasks that were completed within a short span of time.
Here, the craftsmen did their work as dictated by a plan and the result was fast and accurate. Hence, Babbage concluded that intelligence existed in the mind and not the body; in the minds of the inventor and the industrialist and not in the bodies or the skills of the artisans. Thus, great efficiencies in manufacture or, for that matter, calculation, could be achieved if one worked with a factory structure – an organization in which the intelligent inventor decides the plan of action and the body of craftspeople executes it. This separation of the mind from the body or of the “thinking entity from the “working entity” was what was Babbage’s industrialist idea was all about.
By Pranav R Kamat
References:
1. Schaffer, Simon - "Babbage's Intelligence: Calculating Engines and the Factory System." Critical Inquiry 21, no. 1 (1994): 203-227.
2. Zimmerman, Andrew - “The Ideology of the Machine and the Spirit of the Factory: Remarx on Babbage and Ure.” Cultural Critique No. 37 (Autumn, 1997), pp. 5-29
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