“Low-Grade Human Labor” and Computers: Discourses on
Technological Unemployment in the Mid-20th Century
Mai Sugimoto
Kansai University
Algorithms became available in a variety of environments with the advent ofhigh-speed digital computers in the 1940s and the commercialization ofprogrammable computers in the 1950s.
When digital computers were developed in the 1940s, there was much discussion
among mathematicians and logicians familiar with them about what the new
digital computers could do and how they would affect the work of mathematicians.
This was connected to the fact that digital computers were built to performcalculations and computations that were too large and tedious for humans tohandle. For example, Alan Turing stated in his “Lecture to the London
Mathematical Society Feb. 20 1947” that good “mathematicians will be needed inorder to do the preliminary research on the problems, putting them into a form forcomputation”, while “stereotyped” tasks, such as card punching, would be easily
replaced by machines.
Discussions about “automation” began in the United States in the 1950s. This
was triggered by the incorporation of control devices and later computers into
production lines, i.e., the beginning of general-purpose use of computers, includingcommercial use, beyond the scope of numerical computation work. The term
“automation” became widely known with John Diebold's article in 1952.
The argument of factory automation and labor, and thus technologicalunemployment, in the 1950s is well-known for Norbert Wiener’s book The HumanUse of Human Beings. In several works, including this book, Wiener discussed how
the introduction of computers and feedback control devices into various locations
could transform labor and how this could affect human economic life and culture.
About mathematics, Wiener noted in his unpublished paper that “mathematicians
who can make adequate use of [machines’] great capacities” would perform“marvelous tasks” using computers, and that in the future “logical computinglaboratories” will develop, where experts will “use the machine as an extension oftheir brains”. He added, “[t]he machine as an adjuvant and supplement to humanactivity will unquestionably be of great value and importance in the future in all
ranges of human activity”.

According to Wiener, “low-grade human labor” was

the “cement” that kept the human society together, but once it was gone, “othermotives, other employment of leisure, and other human valuations” would beneeded as the new cement.
This Wiener’s argument could be understood in relation to the issues addressedby John Maynard Keynes in “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren” (1930)
and partially discussed in Bertrand Russell’s “In Praise of Idleness” (1932). Weiner
was taught by Russell in the 1910s, and Russel referred to Weiner’s book in a 1952
essay, in which he went further in his conclusions about the consequences forsociety of technological unemployment and the reduction of labor. Russell said thedevelopment of “mechanical brains” would take the place of factory labor andhuman decision-making, and the labor movement would inevitably end as working
hours got limited. Russell stated that “our whole ethical system” based on the ideathat “people ought to be useful and should show their usefulness by work” wouldcollapse.
More than 80 years later, has the working environment concerning computingchanged dramatically? In the 20th century, it might be said that the substitution oflabor as described by Turing, Wiener, and Russell was only partially realized due tothe limitations of computer performance. On the other hand, however, “low-grade”
computational labor has not necessarily been replaced by machines in the 21stcentury. Instead, previous studies have shown that still it has been carried out bypeople in weaker positions, for example, women and people in developing countries.
The process of mechanization and automation over computation and control overthe past century needs to be re-examined historically.