Computers and Us

Musings on Life and Technology

Bruce Hearn

A good number of my colleagues talk in my presence exclusively about computers, about features that are missing in that suite of software and that hardware device, about the possibilities of new development in web technology, about the BeBox or P6, about MSVC 4.0, applications and games that are on the verge of release.  They also talk macho about brewing coffee with Mountain Dew™ or Water Joe™, Ephedrin™ dissolved in Coke™ and various other focus-inducing potions.  They talk of rendering algorithms, or the techno DJs they like, and scream abuse at each other over while playing a nice invigorating game of Quake. They look a bit shabby round the edges, and I'm afraid to say, sometimes give off unsavory odors.  But they have very logical minds, and take classes as undergraduates at the world-renowned (well in Computer Science circles anyway) Comp. Sci department of the UW-Madison.  Their social lives are carried out for the most part online; there is usually a chat console open, and it's not uncommon for several people in the room to be commanding a missile- or sword-toting Avatar around a Quake Zone or a virtual Dungeon.  Outside computers there is very little that can hold their interest.  A couple of people have an oddball interests in Kendo, an inexplicable fascination with ancient Mesopotamia, and one fellow can hold his own on the mandolin.  He likes to dress up as a minstrel each year when the Society For Creative Anachronism come to town.  Presumably, he likes to think of himself as a bit of a Renaissance Man.

 
Unless you've never known any different, or have had your head in the sand, you'll be well aware that we're living through a time of extremely rapid technological change. Modern living means that we must all learn to "manage complexity" in order to simply cope. Sometimes this can seem like more than a full-time job in itself.  As many of our problems become entirely abstracted from reality, so do we in the west gradually drift into space, at the great expense of the material resources back on Earth.  Four of every five people in the world live in poverty.  It is tempting to think that those of us fortunate enough to have been born here are being quite insensitive about the suffering of others.  Ignorance is the "reality buffer" that enables us the luxury of abstraction from the mundane, every individual living in our free society has a responsibility for critical examination of their own impact on the world. It is not ethically consistent for individuals to behave as we do, and with so few people giving any thought to the issue at all, save for a couple of prayers once a week - perhaps - then it cannot be the fault of the individual but instead that of the state.  Individual desires follow the ad campaigns of state-sanctioned multinational corporations from fad to ephemeral fad.  With the world of substance now far behind us, televised Hollywood smiles will win elections.  Universal suffrage means we all get to choose what to watch on TV.  All we need to do is sit back, relax and accept the images that are being scanned into our retinas.  Like a good citizen.

Then what of the ethics? Is it even possible for an individual to live ethically in a techno-industrial society? Are the preconditions for our daily existence etched out of third world misery? At what point in "civilization" is it justifiable for a superpower such as the US to take hegemonic responsibility, a paternal role, in world affairs? Although the case can be made that American intervention in the affairs of the rest of the world is often beneficial to peace, freedom and stability, it is highly doubtful whether America is merely acting as a beneficent patron for world affairs.  And what can we expect?  Occasion for intervention is almost ubiquitous.  The New Roman Empire need do little more than select which actions to take for its own economic interest and the further consolidation of its power.  What of the third world, and the net flow of money coming from them into the west? Can the individual be declared responsible for the fate of a child in Ethiopia? Can one assign blame to a state that glosses over its anti-fair trade practices by waving flags and reminding everyone to be proud to be a part of the greatest nation on Earth?  We all know the television campaigns that show us an emaciated child, and then ask what we will do to help.  We will wince, but somehow manage to suspend our credit outlays until the next commercial eases us back into a zombie state. If we think about it at all, we will consider that there are enough problems at home in America, what with the inner cities and all this economic uncertainty.  And so we'll decry how awful it is that there are starving millions out there, and then do nothing at all from the comfort of the La-Z-Boy.  If we do anything at all, it will be to grab another Ranch Dorito™ from the "Get Your Own" Bag.   And tacitly support a regime that spends an order of magnitude more on the military than on welfare or social programs.

All around are the indicators of a great cultural demise.  My previous manager at the IT Helpdesk was a man who attacked complexity in the manner of a Scottish terrier, who wags its cute little tail and jumps around amiably before fastening its teeth onto your hand and refusing to let go.  He seems loopier and loopier every time I talk to him, a career man, careering up the corporate ladder. He's not alone. Who can foster warm human friendships in this time of rapid change?  How many of your neighbors do you know?

What can we do about all this? It would be easy to say that this society will collapse within thirty or forty years, unable to handle any more the social disparities internally or on a global scale. But the truth is, life will go on, and the struggles of the time will be forgotten in the Elegies to the great accomplishments of a few scientists.  The next century bodes ill for us in terms of employment trends towards automation; in this country the average salary of a Mexican or an Afro-American is far below that of a white man. And then you can compare it to the rest of the world.  The global population that will double in 30 years.  The environmental is showing its strain under the unprecedented growth we humans have made over the last 200 years.  Isolation of individuals in our culture already exists due to work pressures and patterns of living (eg. the planned suburb).  We grow further apart through the availability of surrogate technological realities, and grow together in a non-verbal, participatory ritual of digital participation. This is the latest stage in an inexorable process that in this century started with the telephone, which radically allowed for live communication at distance.  The automobile reshaped our living patterns and created a vast network of roads in the US up through the 60s, assuring that in order to get a carton of milk one now had to get in the car to do so.  At the same time of course it became possible for us to conceive of cartons of milk, refrigerators, electric stoves and the rest of the accoutrements of modern living that now clutter our homes.  We westerners no longer know what to do outside the city; we will now approach the country with a sense of amusement, in a car - and sometimes we'll just keep on driving down the highway, unless there is a McDonalds™ or a gas station to check out in the interstitial space between two cities.  Airplanes too give us the sense of continuity between places of desire by negating the physical land space between cities by constructing a polished steel framework in which  with headphones on, we sit and sip soda, watching the latest blockbuster movie. That television is not just entertainment.  It is a surrogate for reality; for many it is more rewarding to watch television than to experience real life. The computer is to television what the airplane is to the car. With Photoshop™ I can manipulate the appearance of a photograph, blurring reality into image, casting doubt as to the image's authenticity.  Where does "original" mean, when a journalist might use a digital camera, remove someone from the picture with consumer software, and email the image back to their news agency, where further image "cleaning" happens before it hits print?  Can a child learn more about animals on a David Attenborough cd-rom than by going to the Zoo, which might be crowded with people, smell unpleasant, and cost too much, with Tigers going crazy with boredom as they pace their small cages. These days we can communicate with the world from home. We can order our groceries and clothes from home. Laundry services will deliver your clean laundry. Telecommuting is a great option for new mothers who need to keep an eye on the tots.  This does away with the office and travel overheads, which can more than double a worker's salary. But it also means that increasingly, there is no longer a need to leave your home. Some have called this the "hive" effect, and it will undoubtedly make like easier: working at home is good for families, for mothers and the disabled, for the environment that car rides are eliminated to and from work, and for the business which need not spend as much on office overheads. But what happens when community is dissolved at work, just as technology has dissolved community at home?

It is interesting to note that Charles Babbage, who came up with many important computer concepts in the 1830's saw the computer as a means to centralize managerial power and to decimate the costs involved in industrial manufacturing; ie. by eliminating the worker. Now that his dreams are coming true, we must question whether this is an ideal that can be successfully implemented in a society that has little control over either population or technological growth. However, intent is no indication for where a technology will take us. The monks who in the fourteenth century invented the mechanical clock intended it to be used for regulating monastery life. It was when the king of France in 1370 declared that the citizens would order their lives around the Palace Clock that time began to impose on our everyday lives. Ironically, this disrupted the prayer routine in the monasteries of Paris. Without the clock, we would also not have capitalism today.

It is not the end of the world. To live in this society today it is necessary to be familiar with parts of the system. Ignorance is bliss until you realize where it got you. It is the responsibility of the individual to steer away from homogeneity, away from the human-as-device paradigm. To combat the nascent corporate computer culture, to forfend the real-ization of Orwell's bleak vision, there must be a powerful voice, numerous individuals, who speak for the good of the many. Financial wealth is known to be clustered around an elite few in the world. It is possible that this model of society will crumble in the next few decades; surely there will be changes, as our current reality segues into another form.  But just as we are told in Chaos theory how a butterfly flapping its wing caused a storm a thousand miles away, so too does an individual's direct action lead to change.  We have a duty to open our eyes and try to imagine the way we would like to live, and then take firm steps to get there.  It is left for individuals to do what must be done, self-education and self-organization into groups who will lobby harder for change.  I'm not talking of being a Luddite here.  But there will be voices of dissent and then will push us through the dialectic process into a warmer, more human world again.  A thousand individual actions make a vast difference to the state of the world.  Let one of these voices be your own.  Our government is tied to economic interests and our space-bound computer culture, and the sorry situation is that "the national economy" is usually a higher priority than "the good of the many." The corporate/industrial computer society is one that has the potential to dehumanize, centralize power, turn the individual into a modular device and the society at large into a machine. There are few who can benefit from a society thus structured, but it is too early to say whether this will be the outcome.  Historically, technology has been inexorable, but the effects are often surprisingly unpredictable. I have to conclude with a belief that there is no grand conspiracy, just a number of smaller ones.  And on a hopeful note - that every individual gesture helps to grease our way to a kinder future.