this film is about an idea and idea we call the polymorphic concept of data processing system design which is a complicated name for an idea but the idea itself isn't so complicated when you think of it in terms of how people get machines to help solve their problems now if you have a problem to be computed you take it to a computer and as your problems get bigger you need a bigger computer as more and more guys like you have problems to solve they take turns on the computer which isn't so bad if the computer is fast enough which it can be if it is big enough and expensive enough but as the number of guys and the number of problems increase the machine get isn't that a waste because while one guy is using the computer to sounds an easy problem which may only be taking one thousands of the computer everyone else has to wait on that she spends still more money and buy  bigger computer but worse if one piece fades the old computer will probably quit even though most of it is perfectly good ready and willing to  around here to start with if you look inside you see that it isn't just one solid hunk of computer a lot of individual parts and circuits which each have specialized functions now it would be nice if someone would divide that huge computer into little parts and solder the connections so that everybody could get a chance to use the parts in the needs for his particular problem next you will want to organize things a little not in the usual way but the brain the computer part not only supervises everything but also insists on doing a large share of the detail what you want is more delegation and more easygoing cooperative relationship between all the parts so that they can associate freely and directly with one another in various ways isn't this a lot of fun actually of course the electronic boxes don't make a nice flexible automatic switchboard connection like the telephone that way the computer box is the real brains of the facts or sending messages from one box to another carrying out simple logical routines and so each computer box doesn't have to be so big this is distributed control distributed memory distributed arithmetics distributed everything and it makes sense because no more than one guy can be using the system at the same time a number of these are problems and when those and if one box quits it's no great catastrophe the system just automatically switches the job to another box if you find yourself getting the business signal to by mode of exactly the kind of boxes you need that's like adding on new subscribers as they move it or you can add more displays so that more people can see what goes on suppose your problem calls for a lot of detailed work to do most of the time when you buy boxes to give you all the memory or messenger service or whatever else you meet on the other hand if your problems are mostly heavy duty brain you can load your system up with computer boxes when you really needed and can prove you need it you can put together a big system or even a really big overinvesting early or throwing anything away or starting from scratch again so you save money and all the while you have better reliability multiple use and better access you can even switch together to complexes three or four by commission by telephone system or you can connect in one of those ordinary giant computers as a subscriber if you go for a super system and this doesn't mean that you end up with one big party you can keep some of the lines private eye opening if you switch is permanently so that certain information won't be available to know the subscribers and so now you see that it wasn't just exactly a computer you wanted but a group of guys with brains and a group of boxes electronic brains and console displays all connected together in and this is all there is to the data processing concept known as polymorphic many shape or multiple mode for the matrix comes from maybe just a common sense which b