The Glass Cage: Where Automation Is Taking Us
By Nicholas Carr, W.W. Norton & Company, 288 pages, $26.95
The possibility that robots may one day take all the jobs and put the human race out of work is an idea that has taken a strong hold on the public imagination of late. Not since the 1960s has the prospect of machines replacing people inspired such awe and angst.
Left out of this picture, however, is a bigger narrative about how the onrush of robot technology could change humanity’s future. Automation — for which, read sophisticated software routines informed by advanced algorithms — is already creeping into many walks of life far beyond the workplace, steering our decisions and promising to take the effort out of everyday tasks.
What is to stop automation from ultimately assuming all of mankind’s mental and physical efforts? And when the machines do all the heavy lifting — whether in the form of robots commanding the physical world or artificial intelligence systems that relieve us of the need to think — who is the master and who the slave?
Despite the antagonism he sometimes stirs in the tech world (an influential article of his published by the Harvard Business Review in 2003 was called, provocatively, “IT Doesn’t Matter”) author Nicholas Carr is not a technophobe. But in “The Glass Cage” he brings a much-needed humanistic perspective to the wider issues of automation. In an age of technological marvels, it is easy to forget the human.
Carr’s argument here is that, by automating tasks to save effort, we are making life easier for ourselves at the cost of replacing our experience of the world with something inferior. “Frictionless” is the new mantra of tech companies out to simplify life as much as possible. But the way Carr sees it, much of what makes us most fulfilled comes from taking on the friction of the world through focused concentration and effort. What would happen, in short, if we were “defined by what we want”?
Mankind’s mastery of the environment owes much to the use of tools that extend our limited physical and intellectual powers, as Carr readily admits. What is different now, though, is both the pace of change — it’s hard to adjust when so much can alter in the course of a human lifetime — and the nature of the technology itself.
At the risk of simplifying, Carr’s assertion is that there are two types of technology, which might loosely be described as the humanist and the anti-humanist. The former sets its makers free. Tools such as hammers or cars fall into this category: they extend the user’s capabilities.
Anti-humanist technology, on the other hand, sidelines its creator. Its sole purpose is to replace human effort, not enhance it. If humans are ever brought into the equation to interact with this technology — for instance, when pilots have to override automatic flight systems in an emergency — the results are often dismal: deskilled by the machines and forced into machine-like modes of behaviour to operate in the machine’s world, the people seldom excel.
The inevitable result is a call for more automation to take fallible humans out of the picture entirely. Removing the need for sustained physical and intellectual effort causes a degeneration in people’s capabilities, argues Carr. His description of research into these areas is exhaustive, to the point where some chapters of this book read like a glossary of academic work in the field. But it helps him build a persuasive argument.
In some instances, the effects of using technology to disintermediate the world sound minor. It’s hard to feel much sympathy for Carr’s complaint that automatic transmission systems in cars, for instance, have robbed him of the pleasure of driving. But others are more persuasive. As machines take on an increasing number of everyday tasks, they will inevitably have to make decisions with moral consequences, weighing courses of action that have different impacts on the people affected. And that is before even thinking about battlefield robots that are programmed to kill.
If there’s a criticism to be made of Carr’s attempt to save mankind from its own technology, it’s that he underplays the very substantial benefits. Driverless cars would go a long way towards eradicating the millions of deaths and injuries that are almost entirely caused by human error. Also, through advances in productivity, automation is a significant contributor to economic betterment.
Nor does he make allowances for the new types of work thrown up by making older forms of human endeavour redundant, or the possibility that mankind might find more rewarding outlets for its energy and creativity if the need to work was largely removed.
Surprisingly, however, Carr manages to find a positive note to end on. He considers, but largely rejects, the possibility that a more human-centric form of design will emerge to put people back at the centre of their own technological creations.
The economic forces leading towards replacing people completely with software are simply too strong.
Likewise, he holds out little hope that people will voluntarily turn their backs on the latest technology in favour of less sophisticated tools that demand more of them, but which are ultimately far more rewarding to use. The lure of labour-saving is too great.
The hope arises, instead, from a belief that the social strains from the present wave of technological advance will force a reaction. Just four pages from the end, after contemplating the dire consequences of putting all the world’s workers out of work, he ventures: “To ensure society’s wellbeing in the future, we may need to place limits on automation.”
Ideas of progress may have to change, he adds: today’s blinkered celebration of all forms of progress would need to be replaced by a more sophisticated approach that takes into account the social and personal consequences.
How to achieve a more balanced view of progress when all of today’s incentives are geared towards an ever-faster cycle of invention and deployment of new technologies? There is no room for an answer in this wide-ranging book. As ever, though, Carr’s skill is in setting the debate running, not finding answers.
–Financial Times
