Wednesday, November 03, 2021
Tech arrogance isn't new
Following on Zillow's stupid trust in the computer, here's a view of the problem from 1954, in Computers and Automation as usual.
Fletcher Pratt was a well-known popularizer of science and tech. I read his book on cryptography in 1959 and picked up a tremendous amount of insight into language and thinking.
In this case Pratt sounds just like Bezos or Zuckerberg.
The problem is likely to grow more acute with the advance of automation into new fields. Does it mean some kind of reorganization of industrial structure? It would be almost idle to predict, for the problem has not yet been submitted to enough study. It is possible that the situation will require going back to the level of the secondary schools and altering education. As now organized these schools tend to turn out specialists or at least people who will specialize at the next educative stage. Yet the demand of both automatic computers and an economy based on automation is for an immensely increased adaptability on the part of the individual. He must he willing not merely to accept periodic reeducation, but to regard it as a normal part of existence.Sound familiar? Submit or die! Re-education every year! Miners must become coders! It doesn't work. PEOPLE ARE DIFFERENT and PEOPLE NEED STABILITY. If you want people to learn, you need to maintain a civilization that lets them learn naturally and gradually. You need a bond of two-way loyalty, assuring the workers that they will continue to be useful and PAID after they risk their time and energy on adaptation. The promise of re-education was fake, just a scam to enable total destruction of work and industry. After reviewing the story of the Luddites, Pratt predicts:
Modern counterparts of the machine-smashers can expect to achieve little more in the long run. The really important impact of the new methods will be felt when the use of computers is extended to take in the totality of a business or industrial operation instead of only some of its parts. It is important to realize that computers today are as it were grafted onto industry and business, rather than built in as an integral part. There is no business in the United States today whose total structure has been set up with the use of computers as an essential part of the operation. Partly, no doubt, this is because the machines are so new; there has not been time for the growth of industries in which they perform a fully integrated function. Nor has programming progressed to the point where it is possible to instruct a computer on all the elements in a given industrial operation and expect an answer that will make managerial decisions almost unnecessary.67 years later it's STILL not possible to "make managerial decisions unnecessary". QED Zillow. Clearly this level of control seemed inevitable in 1954, and it still seems inevitable to the aristocrats. Or more accurately, the aristocrats want us to think it's inevitable. THEY KNOW IT'S A HOAX BECAUSE THEY CREATED THE HOAX.
Labels: AI point-missing, Natural law = Soviet law, NOT alternate universe
¶ 10:37 AM
