In a Computerized World: Are We Humans Anymore?

Andrew asks if in a computer dominated world, if being a person means anything anymore.

February 12, 2003

Affordable Rural Broadband: Some high speed access is out in the country, but it's expensive.

All Hand Coded: I enjoy coding things myself despite all the extra work it creates.

As A Computer Programmer: One of a series of essays on different carrer options and what they entail.

Bureaucracies Have Political Cultures: Despite the image of apolitical life in bureaucracy, the people who make government work are often very political.

Bureaucracy: It's Problems: The reality of bureaucratic thought in our society.

Canned Reality: A discussion of video games, and television, and their effects on society.

Criticizing Technological Rationality: A careful analyisis of role of technology and bureaucratic rationality on the world around us.

DTV: Time To Get Rid of Your TV?: They won't work next year, so recycle 'em, and look to other sources of news.

Email and Spam: Many of us just get too much useless information but at least we don't have to dispose of it.

Highly Urbanized Computing: How Windows XP is not unlike our big cities.

Hudson Valley Not Tech Valley: Our future is in diversity, not technology.

Malta's Reality: Far from being a great tech center, it shows the freedom of rural life.

Nation of Managers: Management is not a solution to our problems.

Post-Modernity: Five areas of study that allow us to see beyond the limits of science and technology.

Running out of Freedom: It sometimes seems like that I've seen everything locally (eventhough I haven't), and that finding cgreener pastures is getting harder.

Simplicity: For the Web, For the World: Simple webpages present information quickly. A simple world makes sure we get that infomation.

Tech Valley Realities: High Tech in Albany won't just give us jobs, it will also change cultures and increase sprawl.

The Endless Freedom Assault of our Technocratic Society: How somehow our fixes to our problems may actually make things worst.

The Parthenon: Technology and Politics: Reviewing the relationship between technology, politics, and a greater society.

The Story of the Non-Programmer: Sometimes thinking about who you have been, can take the stress off a rough day, and the bad memories that a class may bring back.

Tired of Computers? I Don't Think I'm Alone.: After a long semister of dealing with them, and doing lots of school work, he's just plain tired...

Webpages: Keep 'em Simple: We need to have simple webpages that load quickly.

Wireless Internet: Free hotspots make it possible for us to access high speed internet without cost.

In a Computerized World: Are We Humans Anymore?

Do humans really exist in our computerized world? So much of our world is little more then a bureaucratically designed computer abstration. Insitutions by law can't look at people personally, but can only consider the facts of the case. Companies can't consider race, sex, age, or many other things when hiring or promoting.

Computing only serves to promulgate this trend. We now have traffic lights that are intelligent and try to manage traffic quickly, but the fail to make a human connection. These lights have no idea on what your driving, if your early or late, or what kind of person you are. A long-hair driving a Honda, or a short-hair driving a pickup truck will only be judged by an amount of time you wait at the light. You just wait as you go over the acucation plate at the red light, for your wait to be up, and get the green light to proceed.

Programming on computers seems to continue that trend. We have to deal syntax errors and compilers that have their own explanations for what is wrong in bureacratized language. It's all or nothing in the computerized world. Logic errors are different in the sense that they don't give you cryptic errors, but they don't work. These errors are much more difficult to fix, but are closer to our human world.

Banking is similiar. You drive to the bank making human decisions. When you go to the bank you fill out some papers and give it to the teller. At the endof the month you get a statement back with even more numbers. There is no human response to your account, unless you bounce it. Wealth in the computer world is defined by numbers stored in a computer database. You don't matter to the bank or the computer, and there is no human connection. At least the computer does not discrimate.