| By revolutionizing governmental and military planning during World War II, the computer signaled the advent of a new technological order that would change the structure and practices of the private sector in the post-war era. The arrival of the computer, as a tool for manipulating information at unprecedented speeds and levels of complexity, simultaneously precipitated major shifts in the managerial structures of multinational corporations and allowed for their expansion into international markets on an entirely new scale. As a result, the computer emerged as a significant component of the popular imagination as well, fueling cultural production in literature, sociology, cinema, art, and, as is discussed in the dissertation, architectural and industrial design.; Through a single but extremely complex case study---the Design Program established at International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) in 1956, headed by Eliot Noyes, Charles Eames, Paul Rand, George Nelson, and Edgar Kaufmann, Jr.---the dissertation traces the self-conscious effort to naturalize this new and uncanny technology through design, and examines the concomitant transformation of design itself into a process subject to computation. In chapters treating the incorporation of the applied sciences of management and ergonomics into design, graphics, the industrial design of computers, architecture, film and exhibitions, the dissertation offers significant reappraisals of the work of the designers mentioned above and many of their contemporaries---e.g. Eero Saarinen, Marcel Breuer, Mies van der Rohe, Paul Rudolph, Egon Eiermann, SOM, and Harrison & Abramovitz. Concluding with the appearance of the PC and advanced graphic interfaces in 1976---which through word processing, graphic databases, and computer-aided drafting provided a digital, virtual equivalent of previously analog design tools and practices---the dissertation offers a prehistory of the integral role that computers have come to play both in design and everyday life. |
