Automation Makes Us Dumb

An interesting article that expresses some of the nagging thoughts that "de-skilling" is becoming more obvious. I've tried to tell myself that I've become cynical and biased with age, but the author's commentary about medical practitioners cuts too close to the bone, coinciding with my own observations.

There's a great range of skill among doctors (any specialty), though a hard thing to quantify. I'd agree reliance on devices may not always be an asset or promote greater skill. Perhaps it's a bigger issue for the less experienced, but not really just a matter of years on the job.

Of course using computers to find information (and for so many other purposes) can be extremely useful. However there's a trend to let the machine determine the scope of info one looks for, and when that happens, it's likely to lead to missing important clues in clinical practice.

The key to expertise isn't knowledge, it's knowing the limits of knowledge. Knowing that one doesn't know is crucial and only learned by experience. Computers can't provide info not programmed in, and even worse, most of the time won't acknowledge lack of knowledge, that the humans have to rely on themselves.

I often think about the benefit of experience I've accumulated. I put it this way, it took thirty years of practice to fully realize what I didn't know and that's what enables me to be so much better at it now.

When used as a tool, an instrument to extend or refine, not replace, our powers of observation and problem-solving computers can be useful, our skills enhanced. But we have to exercise our own unaided senses to optimally develop our abilities and talents.

The problem that's developing is misconstruing tools to be oracles and disregarding the power of our built-in computational facilities.

To misquote Cicero: O tempora o artis! Or if you want to go farther back, refer to the Phaedrus, when Socrates attacks writing (by citing Egyptian criticism as precedent!).

The fact is, since the invention of the water wheel automation has allowed us to become physically weaker. Some choose to work on their strength, others choose to use their time elsewhere (when in the past there was no choice). And this automation has liberated those who are not strong at all.

The same is true of the computer. There is nothing preventing you from developing the memory skills preliterate societies required, and there are even contests today of people who have honed (and probably improved) those skills.

Of course there are areas in which particular contemporary human skills will continue to be valued (perhaps plane piloting, until automation becomes good enough; perhaps piano playing simply because some people will prefer a human at the keyboard). But most such skills will be pursued for fun. I still like writing PDP-10 machine code from time to time but I hardly consider it a practical art at this point.

Instead people will continue to use the computer to extend human capability just as rockets allow people to "jump" higher than they could on their own. The "human-centered design" (as described by Carr, who should be ashamed of himself because he certainly knows better) is simply a condescending school of design. What's truly human centered is using technology to allow people to do what they want, whether it's to explore space or to write more bad memos and bad buildings, or simply passively watch more television.

That is because you never find a higher purpose of yourself. Automation didn't make anyone dumb, but it certainly cannot make anyone smarter.

I'd rather be dumb and have free time than organize files every day and maintain my intelligence(not sure how this can really be quantified though)