'Too far ahead of its time': Britain, Burroughs and real-time banking in the 1960s

In 1969, the popular British television programme, Tomorrow's World, featured an item that predicted point of sale terminals in every high street shop ushering in the country's computerised cashless economy. The basis for the show's prediction was a succession of ambitious projects initiated by the British banks, each with the aim of introducing a new real-time computer banking system to its network of branches by 15 February 1971. The banks, threatened by state-sponsored competition, inspired by the success of SABRE, American Airlines' real-time airline reservations system, and pressured by forthcoming decimalisation, all chose 'D-Day' as their immovable deadline. And, in each case, US computer manufacturer, Burroughs, promised a B8500 central super computer linked to a nationwide network of TC500 intelligent terminal satellites. Perhaps unsurprisingly for Tomorrow's World, the programme's predicted coming of the cashless society was wildly optimistic. But so too, it turned out, were the plans of the banks. Real-time banking in Britain never materialised in the 1970s, let alone by February 1971, as one by one the banks abandoned their plans. In this paper, I revisit the case of Burroughs and Barclays Bank. Blending oral testimonies with archival sources, I explore a consumer perspective of coterminous computing labour as the two companies set about making the idea of real-time banking a reality. I reveal how a community of practice made up of Barclays' computer programmers and Burroughs' engineers was able to transgress established business boundaries in pursuit of a technical ideal, only to eventually become architect of its own fate. The co-construction and 'interpretive flexibility' of this technological failure is considered in light of the existing literature, with particular attention given to the attribution of blame. In this case, where there was attribution, it was judged to have lain with the technology, which was simply regarded as 'too far ahead of its time.ï¿

Materiality, modernity and space: the British banks and their computer centres, 1961-1963

British banks in the 1950s were conservative, restrained and non-competitive. They were also early adopters of large-scale electronic computing technology. In contrast to their behaviour in business, their appropriation of this technology was ambitious, competitive and prone to excess. Between 1961 and 1963 the banks saw the computer as a status symbol as they deliberately constructed their first computer centres as sites for public display. Emphasising the materiality of the computer enhanced by its material setting was nothing new – IBM had done this in 1948 with its SSEC at its Manhattan headquarters – but what was interesting about the British banks was the way they in which they did this whilst at the same time upholding 400 years of tradition. The spatial demands of the computer had required a dislocation of customer accounting from branch to computer centre that was an opportunity for the banks to generate some publicity and differentiate their offerings. A number of 'performances' were held in the West End of London for invited guests, and one went as far as claiming that its computer was at the heart of the 'most advanced bank book-keeping system in the world'. The computer and its peripherals were colour coded to help explain functions and their operators were shown working in an environment of clinical efficiency. Where technologies were immaterial or opaque, for instance the computer's programs or customer account details stored on magnetic tape, they were made visible by drawing attention to their modern qualities such as speed, capacity, accuracy and size. The banks' computer centre modernity was a world away from the 'discreet modernism' coined by Jon Agar to describe the British government's use of computing technology at the same time. By combining visual, oral and written sources, I explore elements of bank computer centre design and the sociomaterial ensembles within to show how the centres were presented as homes for a computer-led orchestration of modern technologies and modern work whilst important notions of tradition were upheld in the branch. Considering the relationship between materiality, modernity and space, I suggest that the banks' computer centre modernity was a conspicuous modernism in which the spaces of the computer centre and the branch were like the two faces of Janus, looking forwards and backwards at the same time. At the computer centre one looked firmly towards the future, while in the branch the other looked cautiously behind

Britain's first computer centre for banking: What did this building do?

At the beginning of the 1960s Barclays became the first British bank to open a computer centre. In this paper I trace the life of this building starting with its official opening on 4 July 1961 and ending with its protracted closure a decade later. From initial status as the most advanced bank bookkeeping system in the world serving as a highly visible symbol of the bank's technological power, to a final repurposing of its grandiose reception as a distribution point for pre- and post-decimalisation output, the building's various meanings are revealed. Making use of written, oral, and visual sources I explore the centre's spatial characteristics, its relation to the distributed structure of the branch, and its place as a first dedicated working home for a newly emerging computing subculture. A blend of multiple perspectives internally from the top down and bottom up, and externally from customer and competitor, offer an analysis that uncovers the part played by the first computer centre place in the banking automation race

Long hours and stress in the UK's IT profession: has the European Union's Working Time Directive offered relief?

Only a small amount of research thus far has investigated the relationship between the working conditions of those employed in technical professions, such as Information Technology (IT), and the implications for their well being (Sonnetag et al., 1994). In particular the IT profession in the UK appears to be at risk from a culture characterised by long working hours (Kodz, 2003). In addition to the established links between long-term computer use and upper extremity musculoskeletal disorders (Punnett & Bergqvist, 1997), previous research has also positively linked working for excessive hours as potential stressor to the mental health of employees (Sparkes et al., 1997; Spurgeon, Harrington & Cooper, 1997). A prevalence of mobile computer technologies has also meant the erosion of traditional boundaries between work and home (Venkatraman, Tanriverdi & Stoke, 1999). Furthermore IT professionals have faced a proliferation of complicated methodologies, a growing guilt reaction to a failure to keep pace with ever-changing technological advancements, and the pressure to develop and deliver software in shorter time scales (Perlow, 1998; Stokes, 1996). These very personal issues associated with the quality of working life also have serious organisational implications in terms of increased costs related to absenteeism, recruitment and training; impaired decision making; job dissatisfaction and low morale (Coolican, 2001). The UK's Working Time Regulations (WTR), implemented in 1998, provide a current, normative representation of reasonable working time. This research paper compares the working patterns of a cluster of IT professionals within a large financial services organisation against this model in order to ascertain their position relative to this tolerable standard. The relationship between the subtleties in the way time is ordered and the reported perceptions of the affect of the WTR and other Human Resource initiatives to reduce the culture of long working hours are studied. Whilst it is acknowledged that individual characteristics are important in determining an affinity and ability to work long hours and cope with stress, they are by no means the overriding aspects. Previous researchers such as Moore (1998) have cited adverse organisational factors as more significant in the etiology of work exhaustion than individual factors. This research examines some of those organisational factors and the perceived value of formal initiatives in reducing incidences of long working hours and concomitant pressures. The perceptions of stress and the efficacy of these formalised schemes are examined by observing and questioning those directly affected with regards to their working time, job stressors and work-life balance. The findings indicate that although the organisation in question has made some high-profile attempts to promote a healthy balance between work and home, the efficacy of these efforts is questionable. The working limits set by the WTR are regularly exceeded and long hours are still entwined, and indeed often subtly promoted, within the organisation. Managers and the Human Resources (HR) department appear to send out confusing and contradictory messages. IT professionals, and their partners, are often publicly rewarded for working long hours while others are penalised for doing the same. The performance management system values those working on high-profile projects, with work on these projects often a key factor in gaining promotion. Yet due to the nature of the profession, the organisational sub-culture, and poorly considered workplace design, this work invariably requires the commitment of sustained long hours amid difficult circumstances. As HR try to drive through the principles of the WTR formally, or informally through initiatives such as Work Smarter Not Harder and Go Home On Time days, the unanticipated consequences of their actions and inactions present IT professionals with a stress-laden dichotomy

The Forward Premium Puzzle in a Two-Country World

I explore the behavior of asset prices and the exchange rate in a two-country world. When the large country has bad news, the relative price of the small country’s output declines. As a result, the small country’s bonds are risky, and uncovered interest parity fails, with positive excess returns available to investors who borrow at the large country’s interest rate and lend at the small country’s interest rate. I use a diagrammatic approach to derive these and other results in a calibration-free way.

Where is full employment?

Unemployment in Australia is now at its lowest in over 30 years. This experience of low rates of unemployment has prompted a number of statements that the Australian economy is at or very close to full employment. However, even though unemployment is low in comparison with the previous 30 years, it is greater than the rates experienced in the 1950s and 1960s, during which the average was slightly below two per cent. Furthermore, the 4.4 per cent rate of unemployment in April 2007 included 84,000 who had been unemployed for more than a year. These doubts about whether the Australian economy is currently at full employment are supported by findings of a body of research reported in this paper. This research suggests that, given current policy settings on labour market regulation, microeconomic reform and welfare support, full employment may occur at a rate of unemployment as low as 2.5 per cent. The estimation of this low rate of unemployment is based on a model of a range of equilibrium rates of unemployment.full employment; range of equilibria; Keynesian economics

The Lucas Orchard

This paper investigates the behavior of asset prices in an endowment economy in which a representative agent with power utility consumes the dividends of multiple assets. The assets are Lucas trees; a collection of Lucas trees is a Lucas orchard. The model generates return correlations that vary endogenously, spiking at times of disaster. Since disasters spread across assets, the model generates large risk premia even for assets with stable fundamentals. Very small assets may comove endogenously and hence earn positive risk premia even if their fundamentals are independent of the rest of the economy. I provide conditions under which the variation in a small asset’s price-dividend ratio can be attributed almost entirely to variation in its risk premium.

Hagedorn transition, vortices and D0 branes: Lessons from 2+1 confining strings

We study the behaviour of Polyakov confining string in the Georgi-Glashow model in three dimensions near confining-deconfining phase transition described in hep-th/0010201. In the string language, the transition mechanism is the decay of the confining string into D0 branes (charged W bosons of the Georgi-Glashow model). In the world-sheet picture the world-lines of heavy D0 branes at finite temperature are represented as world-sheet vortices of a certain type, and the transition corresponds to the condensation of these vortices. We also show that the ``would be'' Hagedorn transition in the confining string (which is not realized in our model) corresponds to the monopole binding transition in the field theoretical language. The fact that the decay into D0 branes occurs at lower than the Hagedorn temperature is understood as the consequence of the large thickness of the confining string and finite mass of the $D0$ branes.Comment: 31 pages, Late

Revealed preference analysis of characteristics models

Characteristics models have been found to be useful in many areas of economics. However, their empirical implementation tends to rely heavily on functional form assumptions. In this paper we develop a revealed preference approach to characteristics models. We derive the necessary and sufficient empirical conditions under which data on the market behaviour of heterogeneous, price-taking consumers are nonparametrically consistent with the consumer characteristics model. Where these conditions hold, we show how information may be recovered on individual consumer's marginal valuations of product attributes. In some cases marginal valuations are point identified and in other cases we can only recover bounds. Where the conditions fail we highlight the role which the introduction of unobserved product attributes can play in rationalising the data. We implement these ideas using consumer panel data on the Danish milk market.product characteristics; revealed preference

Best nonparametric bounds on demand responses

This paper uses revealed preference inequalities to provide tight nonparametric bounds on consumer responses to price changes. Price responses are allowed to vary nonparametrically across the income distribution by exploiting microdata on consumer expenditures and incomes over a finite set of discrete relative price changes. This is achieved by combining the theory of revealed preference with the semiparametric estimation of consumer expansion paths (Engel curves). We label these expansion path based bounds as E-bounds. Deviations from revealed preference restrictions aremeasured by preference perturbations which are shown to usefully characterise taste change.Demand responses, relative prices, revealed preference, semiparametric regression, changing tastes