Nicholas Carr -- The glass cage: Automation and us
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Carr has several concerns.  First, there's the possibly massive loss
of jobs because of automation.  But, we've been worried about that
for a long time.  At each period in history when job loss through
mechanization and automation has threatened, there seems to have
been lots of disruption and lots of suffering on the part of those
affected, but eventually employment comes back, though usually in a
different form.  But, what is just as troubling as the suffering and
lives hurt over the short term is that the jobs, when and if they do
return, may be unsuited for those who need them.  And, many of the
jobs that do return, this time around, seem to be low paying one.
We may be headed for a time when a large majority of people can only
find work that does *not* pay a living wage.  And, that may lead,
seems to be leading to a society that is very skewed in the way of
inequality of wealth and income.

This leads us to Carr's main concern, which is that the jobs we will
mostly be left with and the tools we'll have to do them with will
make us dumber and less skilled.  We'll have both a narrower range
of job related knowledge and a narrower set of skills.

With respect to de-skilling and the dumbing down of our society in
general and workers in specific trades and professions, it's game
over, or perhaps more correctly, we moved on and won't go back.
Airline travel is safer now that it was 40 years ago; we're not
going back.  Surgery, even complex medical procedures, have better
outcomes, more often than before; we're not going back.  Perhaps we
are losing some skills (physical skills and skills that are more
basic, skills like the ability to do arithmetic in our heads and
knowledge about spelling), but we're also gaining new knowledge and
abilities; we're not going back.

The loss of jobs and the profile of newly created jobs is another
matter.  Any time there is disruption and change, there will be some
who disproportionately are able to take advantage of those changes
and of the new conditions that follow them.  These changes are
complex and even chaotic, but it makes sense that *some of* those
who begin with certain advantages (wealth, brains, willingness to
take risks, etc.) will be able to take advantage of these changes
whereas many of those without these advantages will not.  Some of
that is good: successes bring new innovations, new tools, access to
new and more resources, and so on.  Some of that is bad: even in an
orderly society where most of us obey laws and rules, there may be
some, even many, who are left without a way to make a living.  Even
for those who gain the most, there are benefits, not to mention
reasons of morality, for ensuring that all members of our society
can live and function at a reasonably successful level.  But, that
may not be a stable state, or as the term is used in chaos theory,
it may not be an attractor.  So, it's up to our governments to do
some balancing here and to apply corrective action, where none comes
automatically.  That's one of the reasons that we've come to believe
in democratic forms of government: they attempt to help a broader
population rather than a privileged few.  It's far from perfect, but
still better than some of the alternatives.  A number of books and
many articles have discussed the growing inequity in countries with
developed economies.  So, I suppose you could say that we are in the
midst of an experiment to determine whether we can take effective
steps to counter-balance the dislocations that Carr discusses.

You could, as I am tempted to do, slap aside Carr's writing for some
of the reasons above, but that would mean that you lose the value of
his book.  This is not a how-to book, and it does not have a set of
prescriptions for our society.  But, it does provide materials and
insights to help you think through some of these problems.

With respect to job loss, for example, you may want to consider
whether education can be an answer and cure.  Many jobs, many of
them essential, do not require higher education, but that makes
those jobs no less essential for the smooth functioning of our
society.  And, not everyone can benefit from higher education, but
we still need to support conditions that enables them to be
productive and to live successful lives.  And, Carr's discussion of
"flow" and the writings of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (for example, his
book "Flow") is very much on target here, both in terms of how we
have made progress away from long hours of drudgery and long, 10 to
12 hour work days and in terms of how we have off-loaded some of the
more boring work to computers and automation, although, Carr
tends to emphasize the examples where automation has taken away
some of the more rewarding work.

And, a simple-minded example of how Carr can help us avoid the
downside of automation is his discussion of the negative effects of
medical record keeping.  He suggests that, because it encourages the
use of boiler plate and doing copy and paste, it leads doctors to
produce less accurate descriptions of their patients and their
problems and to think less carefully about those problems.  Yes, but
automobiles encourage us to get less physical exercise, and, of
course, the response to that is to exercise more, *not* to get rid
of cars.  And, with respect to medical record keeping and a doctor's
note taking and, more generally, any of the writing and note taking
that we do, we can refuse to "cheat", and rather than copy and
paste, write it ourselves.  So, Carr can also help us find positive
responses to automation, computers, and technology.  If you'd like
to have a more sanguine point of view about Carr's book, you can
read it as a warning and suggestions for how we can take control of
the technology so as to make it work for us and to use in in ways
that improve rather than degrade us.

If you want an antidote to Carr's views (a bit of an antidepressant)
take a look at "The second machine age", by Erik Brynjolfsson and
Andrew McAfee.  They're boosters for the same trends that Carr warns
us about.  Brynjolfsson and McAfee attempt to tell you how to thrive
in and how to benefit from the same changes and environment that
Carr says will make us dumb and degrade us in other ways, too.
Brynjolfsson and McAfee also discuss the negative impacts of
automation and innovation, but they're a little more balanced that
Carr.

04/14/2015

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