You can read more about this speech and my own encounter with it in my full blog post on the topic.
Document citation: Churchill Archives Centre, Papers of Ove Arup, ARUP 5/62
SPEECH AT CHRISTENING OF COMPUTER. 11 MAY 1967.
Our old computer has been discarded - a new one, bigger, better, more powerful, more gleamingly efficient - has taken its place.
This is life - this is progress. ‘Progress’ is the battlecry of our age - what we are all chasing. Few stop to ask where we are going - we just keep going.
Some years ago I expressed a certain uneasiness about the future in some verses which I will quote:
A glorious future Awaits the computer, But what about its poo…
You can read more about this speech and my own encounter with it in my full blog post on the topic.
Document citation: Churchill Archives Centre, Papers of Ove Arup, ARUP 5/62
SPEECH AT CHRISTENING OF COMPUTER. 11 MAY 1967.
Our old computer has been discarded - a new one, bigger, better, more powerful, more gleamingly efficient - has taken its place.
This is life - this is progress. ‘Progress’ is the battlecry of our age - what we are all chasing. Few stop to ask where we are going - we just keep going.
Some years ago I expressed a certain uneasiness about the future in some verses which I will quote:
A glorious future Awaits the computer, But what about its poor master? When even his tutors Turn into computers And progress is faster and faster,
It’s difficult seeing A human being Irrational, full of emotions, Fit into a scheme Where the dominant theme Is efficient production promotion;
Where standardization And automation Govern all human actions, All must conform To the general norm,
- And to hell with recalcitrant factions
We cannot afford any Out of the ordinary Genius or sophistication. Normal behaviour ’s society’s saviour, Conformity builds up the nation.
Maybe managerial Supermaterial Will have to be specially bred. The mass population Must stay at their station, Be mass-entertained and fed.
Can humans survive As bees in a hive,
- A hive of gigantic dimensions? Or will programming fail And passions prevail Causing self-destroying dissensions?
If it’s either - or, And there is no more, The outlook would be disagreeable, So perhaps it’s as well That we cannot tell, That the future is still unforeseeable.
Yes - the future is still unforeseeable. The contrast between the speed of the technical evolution and the slowness in the change of human nature is staggering. The world has become one, but man seems unable to rise above parochial, racial, ideological differences. People in the next village are still foreigners. Arabs and Jews, Hindus and Moslems, left and right, beatniks and squares - insoluble conflict everywhere. Life is conflict and progress. But conflict and technology is a fatal mixture.
I am sorry about this digression - that is not what you are here to hear. That is not what I am here to say. I am to name our new computer. Don’t be misled by my poetical misgivings - I am mightily pleased with our new computer. We cannot go back to spinning wheels and candlesticks, the remedy for bad inhuman technology is better technology. The machine does no harm - as long as it is made to serve humanity and human values, as long as it does not change people in its own image, turning them into robots.
Our new computer should enable us to do more with less drudgery, freeing us for better, more imaginative work. It will be a godsend to our clever engineers, who now really can let themselves go.
Our computer is supposed to be very clever - I will now test it by asking it to name itself.
(Press)
Computer, name thyself!
(Stop)
Well, very clever, but too clever by half. Facetious. Frankly I don’t approve of it.
You’re just a piece of apparatus. You’re not supposed to deal with status. I’m afraid you underrate us Trying to status-implicate us.
No. What you are is a:
Most Useful Master Brain Overcoming Just Unbelievable Masses of Burdensome Operations.
Now, let’s see, what do you make of that? Most useful ... MUMBO JUMBO! Well - that will do very nicely. Most people think of the computer that way anyhow. But we will make it Mumbo for short.
So just to show that man is still master, I will on behalf of my partners and myself name you
Mumbo-Jumbo or Mumbo for short
standing for: Most Useful Master Brain Operator or if you are in a hurry, just plain Mum.
Your slogan shall be:
When in trouble come to Mum Mum will do your little sum.
(Press)
Cogito ... ergo sum Mumbo Jumbo, Mumbo, Mum, Mum you know is not so dumb Please come down and visit Mum.<br)
———
Please note this speech is still under copyright and is reproduced here with permission of the exhibitions team at the Arup Group.
With many thanks to the Arup exhibitions team for permission to reproduce the speech, the Churchill Archives Centre for providing me with a scan of the original text, and to all those I pestered at the Danish Architecture Center, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Arup Group when trying to track it down..