Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine (CHSTM)
University of Manchester
Seminar, Tuesday 3 March, 16:00-17:30
Room 2.57, Simon Building, Brunswick Street, Manchester, M13 9PL
https://goo.gl/maps/RTFk4
Performing Proficiency: Psychological Experiments on Man-Machine Systems in the United States, 1950-1965
Dr. Marcia Holmes (Birkbeck, University of London)
Historians have traced the 'Cognitive Revolution' in American psychology—and its defining metaphor of the mind as information processor—to World War II, when the Allied Forces' victory appeared to rest on their servicemen's ability to operate complex machines such as radar, sonar, anti-aircraft gunnery, and high-speed airplanes. The problems of matching men's abilities to the design of military technology not only laid ground for the theorization of cognition and information processing; it also motivated the field of applied psychological research known as human factors engineering. In the early years of the Cold War, human factors engineering expanded beyond the study of individual human-machine interactions to become a science of 'man-machine systems.' In doing so, it pioneered a form of behavioral experiment that, with assistance from interdisciplinary teams of researchers, computers and generous military support, could simulate in real-time the sociotechnical systems of air defense, air traffic control, and logistics networks. I will argue that interpreting these simulations of man-machine systems through a cognitive or cybernetic lens, as some historians have done, misses their more direct contemporary significance. For the behavioral scientists conducting these experiments, the use of simulations promised to resolve thorny epistemic problems in the study of human-machine interactions. Moreover, these experiments offered a performative space for exploring liberal-democratic sociability within the Cold War's increasingly regimented networks of military command and control. I will argue that recognizing these previously misunderstood aspects of man-machine systems experiments sheds new light on the history of human factors engineering, and the political and epistemological stakes of the Cognitive Revolution in American psychology.
All are welcome and please feel free to pass this announcement on to interested colleagues.
Event organised by Ray Macauley and Amy Chambers
http://www.chstm.manchester.ac.uk/newsandevents/seminars/chstm/index.aspx
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