И.Герцбах. Reality of implementationi...

Dear Subhi,

I am becoming what in Russian is said "graphoman". I have in spare another short story with a romantic title "Flight to France", but this will be later.

All the best,

regards to all friends.

Ilya

 Alik's letter inspired me to write this note in which I would like to share with other people   my subjective impression about the reality of implementing  computers into practice. 

1.       1. The official point of view  in the mid  sixties in USSR was that implementation of computers and mathematical methods would provide future progress of Soviet society and make it possible to accomplish the building of Communism in USSR.

This was a very bold claim. Just a few years earlier, in the mid - fifties, the cybernetics was declared as a science of obscurantism ("nauka mrakobesov").

The first steps in applying computers  were encouraging. Problems of scientific  calculations, stock taking,  registration and small-scale scheduling were successfully made and implemented by computers.  I remember how one high positioned "nachal'nik" privately has expressed to me his opinion that soon the computer decisions will come in conflict with the reality and this will result in nothing good. I personally witnessed two such collisions.

2.       2. I worked in 1973 in the Computer center of Light Industry (Riga). One day, my boss  stormed  into my room and  cried  enthusiastically : "We have it , we found  it! "

Turns out that in the production plan of cloth factory in Ogre (Latvia), has been found an "error": if a

Огрский трикотажный комбинат

wool costume  number 52 would be replaced by a proper number

of costumes of model 50, then  the enterprise  would gain and save 1.5 mln rubles. My boss immediately  informed about his finding the local ministry, the ministry –the boss of Ogres factory.

The days of high spirit very soon ended by a  call from the factory: "You are idiots", -said the Chief Engineer." Do you think that we did not know about this possibility ?

We knew it of course, and would receive a premium for  a rationalization proposal. And now because of your stupidity, we lost this possibility !" He also added that he ordered to  kick out

from his factory any  person from our  organization.

3.       3. The attitude of officials of Civil Aviation Ministry to us, the workers of NII ASU, at least at the beginning of our work, was a clear mixture of hatred,  fear and polite mocking. May be, I am exaggerating, but here is a typical episode.

About 1970, we started to analyze the flight safety conditions in several most important flight control points located  remotely  from the airports. The work was done by Valery,  Georgy, and probably Evgeny was also involved in this work. We knew the potential increase of flight intensity of basic airlines and could therefore simulate and predict the safety conditions in most important control points. The acute problem was that because of growing load, the probability of  appearance of "dangerous close ins" ("opasnoe sblizhenie") become very high.  After Khaim Borisovich saw our results, he said to me: "Take this printout to the Head of Air Traffic Department and show it  to him."

Москва, бывшее здание МГА

I went to Moscow and knocked on the door of the big "nachal'nik". It was a nice looking man, age 40-50, perhaps his name was Andreev.  "Here is the report of what will happen in the next few years in the non controlled flight crossing points"-said I and gave him the printout. For 15 seconds this man was very silent. He understood that I am delivering him a very hot potato. If something will happen in the future, he would be accused of being informed about the danger. His reaction was simple and fast: - " Take away your papers and   immediately get out of   my room !"

4.       4. Probably, the general attitude of the Ministry to our Institute has gradually changed in positive direction, especially after Khaim Borisovich and Maksim successfully carried out the preschedule coordination session with all local companies which took place  in Riga, in the winter of 1971. Shortly after this session,   for the first time, the  schedule was made in full  by computer .

5.       5. Generally speaking, any bureaucratic system will resist to implementing new technologies, methods etc. Very often, Ministry workers were aware of the defects of their work, but by natural reasons were not willing to admit it or to report about them to their bosses. I am convinced that Andreev knew very well about problems of flight safety, it was his permanent headache and he hated any outsider's reminding him about that.

6.       6. In order to change things and make real improvements in the operation of the existing bureaucratic system you need that two things happen. First,  you must be able to carry out an important part of the decision making process better than the existing system does. And second, the existing system is not able  to  perform the new decision process.

 In our case with the central schedule , these two things happened:  our schedule was good enough  and even better than the existing one and, because of Sharkevich's tragic death,

the Ministry was not able to do it .