I see this image go round periodically, wanted to use it at work, and set about trying to find the origin of it. It appears to have first been posted in 2017 a twitter thread by @/bumblebike in reply to @/swiftonsecurity. This is the full version, clearly a hasty snap from an archive file — most versions you see are cropped. Several times in the thread people jump in to ask if OP ever confirmed the source (a "1979 internal presentation" from IBM), but unfortunately it was lost in a flood in 2019.
I'm just writing all this down because I'm going to need it at some point.
It's quite something to think of how much c20 corporate history is sitting in boxes of parents' and grandparents' things in attics and closets. It's also quite something to think that if Elon breaks twitter badly enough a crucial archival stratum of web culture will be torched.
I'd really love to work out the text on the verso of this sheet. There are several sheets stacked, very thin paper, and the topmost one separated a bit, so making sense of it is a lot like reading a palimpsest manuscript, but near as I can tell the verso is titled THE COMPUTER MANDATE and says something like
AUTHORITY
WHATEVER AUTHORITY [........]TTED IT [...]
SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT WITHIN WHICH IT OPERATE[S]
RESPONSIBILITY
TO PERFORM AS PRE-DIRECTED BY THE PROGRAMMER
WHENEVER INSTRUCTED TO DO SO
ACCOUNTABILITY
N[........]
This is of interest because the image in OP, in isolation, lends itself to deployment in contexts of "AI" and algorithmic exploitation, but I'd like to know the original context in which that idea was being expressed.
Rechosting this in case anyone wants to take a crack at separating out the various layers of this jpeg palimpsest
THE COMPUTER MANDATE
AUTHORITY
WHATEVER AUTHORITY IS GRANTED IT BY [THE]
SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT WITHIN WHICH IT OP[ERATES]
RESPONSIBILITY
TO PERFORM AS PRE-DIRECTED BY THE PROGRAMMER
WHENEVER INSTRUCTED TO DO SO
ACCOUNTABILITY
NO[NE] WH[ATSOEV]ER
(next page)
A MANDATE WITH TOO LITTLE AUTHORITY DOES NOT
PROVIDE THE TOOLS REQUIRED TO TAKE ADVANTAGE
OF THE LEVERAGE
A MANDATE WITH TOO LITTLE RESPONSIBILITY [HAS]
TOO LITTLE LEVERAGE FOR THE RISKS [...]
A MANDATE WITHOUT ACCOUNTABILITY IS AN ELEGANT*
FORM OF SUICIDE *(thanks to @widr for spotting more text in the OP image than was evident in the adjusted image)
