If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future

Abstract

The scientists of the Simulmatics Corporation acted on the proposition that if they could collect enough data about enough people and feed it into a machine, everything, one day, might be predictable, and everyone, every human mind, simulated, each act anticipated, automatically, and even driven and directed, by targeted messages as unerring as missiles. (pp. 3–4) That the Simulmatics Corporation failed at this mission is the story recounted by Jill Lepore. In 1959, Simulmatics Corporation approached Democratic party leadership with a computer program that could simulate the electorate. The program could be queried about how voters would react if a campaign followed a particular strategy. In this case, the program was asked what would happen if John F. Kennedy directly confronted anti-Catholicism and religious prejudice. Simulmatics predicted that such a strategy would gain Catholics, minorities, and other voters who resented overt prejudice, in numbers sufficient to tip the election. Indeed, Kennedy won that close election, and Simulmatics claimed to have delivered the result, even hiring a public relations expert to promote this claim. The Kennedy team was enraged at this tactic—part of the campaign was waged over the issue of automation—and would have nothing to do with Simulmatics. The inability to secure a place in the Kennedy White House, as an “automated adviser,” would be the start of a series of problems for the company. Much of its history is its search for contract work—including with the New York Times, the Pentagon in Saigon, and with Daniel Patrick Moynihan on anticipating urban riots—and its inability to deliver results. Simulmatics' failures might be explained as the inherent folly of prediction, but a more plausible explanation includes the company's incompetence, methodological sloppiness, and inability to execute. After reading of its repeated failures, I wonder why Simulmatics continued to receive contracts until its bankruptcy in 1970.