Electronic Kindness
Jeremy Hedley writes on electronic kindness:
It suddenly occured to me that this sort of electronic inventory tracking could spell death to a certain sort of human kindness, where the clerk, recognising me as a regular and big-spending customer, decides to waive the late fees just this once for whatever reason (to put us both in a good mood and keep me coming back for more, say). I’d latched onto the idea of electronic systems making certain forms of human behaviour impossible and was thinking of how so many of our inventions seem to make us smaller, seem to limit us rather than augment our behaviour. I’d hand over my late tapes, the clerk would wave the scanner, and we would both play the roles that some programmer somewhere had scripted for us under the direction of the video chain’s accountants.
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And this is precisely why computers must be engineered with, as I put it in a college essay (that I should post soon), “human potential at the center and the expression of that potential as the end result.” A little grandiose for renting movies, perhaps, but still, computers should never interfere with human actions. The ideal computer system, and the one that I would design, would allow the clerk to open up the otherwise cold and straightforward system and tell it to ignore this or that… essentially, the person would turn off error checking for a moment. What seperates this from giving employees complete run of the system and is that their liberties can be tracked and logged. So they can be kind, but within the bounds set by an employer. The employer then (sufficiently armed with passwords) can do whatever he or she wants.
The problem today, and I think in what you were saying, is that computers aren’t designed to “augment” human efficiency, but overhaul it. Humans are the tools of the computer, not the other way around… and even the employer himself can’t obviate the pre-set system without pulling out a pen and paper. The options isn’t there at all. (“Uhmm… I’m sorry sir, but I can’t just take this back, you see, it’s not in the computer that way—and I can’t add.” ;) )
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And this is precisely why computers must be engineered with, as I put it in a college essay (that I should post soon), “human potential at the center and the expression of that potential as the end result.” A little grandiose for renting movies, perhaps, but still, computers should never interfere with human actions. The ideal computer system, and the one that I would design, would allow the clerk to open up the otherwise cold and straightforward system and tell it to ignore this or that… essentially, the person would turn off error checking for a moment. What seperates this from giving employees complete run of the system and is that their liberties can be tracked and logged. So they can be kind, but within the bounds set by an employer. The employer then (sufficiently armed with passwords) can do whatever he or she wants.
The problem today, and I think in what you were saying, is that computers aren’t designed to “augment” human efficiency, but overhaul it. Humans are the tools of the computer, not the other way around… and even the employer himself can’t obviate the pre-set system without pulling out a pen and paper. The options isn’t there at all. (“Uhmm… I’m sorry sir, but I can’t just take this back, you see, it’s not in the computer that way—and I can’t add.” ;) )
Posted by Kieran at January 12, 2003 6:31 AM :: Link