Automation

[xoxoxoBruce]

I was reading in a 1952 issue of Scientific American about Automatic Control (automation).
Along with the obvious semi-technical stuff was a piece about the social effect.

A slow refashioning of educational facilities, in content as well as in organization, in engineering schools as well as in the research divisions of universities and industries, is in progress. In the main these developments contribute to human welfare.

OK, everyone knows it's coming and they are preparing industry and education to take advantage of it....or vise vera.

snip~ There is first the fear that continued expansion in this direction will be accompanied by large-scale technological unemployment, and in consequence by acute economic distress and social upheaval.
snip~ The U. S. appears to be capable of adjusting itself to a major industrial reorganization without uprooting its basic patterns of living. Large-scale technological unemployment may be a more acute danger in other countries, but the problem is not insurmountable, and measures to circumvent or to mitigate it can be taken.

Yeah, some people will get hurt but that can't be helped and we'll take care of them. That sounds reasonable, but that was 50 years ago when even the Robber Barons had some social conscience. I suppose the Professor couldn't predict the "screw thee - more for me" piggies, that we have today.

snip~ There is next the fear that an automatic technology will impoverish the quality of human life, robbing it of opportunities for individual creation, for pride of workmanship and for sensitive qualitative discrimination. This fear is often associated with a condemnation of “materialism” and with a demand for a return to the “spiritual” values of earlier civilizations.

Spiritual values? The more things change, the more they stay the same.

snip~ Aristotle argued that political democracy was possible only in small societies such as the Greek city-states. If our present complex governmental regulations in such matters as sanitation, housing, transportation and education could have been foreseen by our ancestors, many of them would doubtless have concluded that such regulations are incompatible with any sense of personal freedom. It is easy to confound what is merely peculiar to a given society with the indispensable conditions for democratic life.

The crucial question is not whether control of social transactions will be further centralized. The crucial question is whether, despite such a movement, freedom of inquiry, freedom of communication and freedom to participate actively in decisions affecting our lives will be preserved and enlarged. It is good to be jealous of these rights; they are the substance of a liberal society. The probable expansion of automatic technology does raise serious problems concerning them. But it also provides fresh opportunities for the exercise of creative ingenuity and extraordinary wisdom in dealing with human affairs.

Ernest Nagel, professor of philosophy at Columbia University.

The way I read that is the good Professor says it doesn't matter how controlled our lives become. They can tell us when to eat, sleep and shit, as long as we can inquire, communicate and "participate actively in decisions affecting our lives". What is participate actively?....make the decisions or just suggest what we are allowed to do?

I don't see an increase in "centralized control" as a freedom enhancer.
Oh, there was a cool illustration, too.

[busterb]

Thans Bruce, That seems to get me back on track.