A Suggestion for the Reorientation of Systems Analysis

As first conceived, systems analysis was employed by the technological society to coordinate and control such massive man-machine efforts as the Apollo program. Successes in this realm pointed to the decision making power of such procedures, and the political realm offered a natural extension. John M. Rubel, for example, forsaw a “city technology” as developing in much the same way as a “space technology.” He predicted that the key to such a development lies in the imitation of the applicable features of the organizational approaches that have given us modern, large-scale technology and encouragement of private contractors toward accomplishment of public projects. Proponents of this view regard systems analysis as a special scheme of scientific knowledge and rational social action which purports to remove political decision making from the influence of ideology. Rather, by virtue of its prescriptions of ethical neutrality, it has become the tool of a conservative ideology and recalcitrant of social change...