I Zlji~i::iii~iNiiii~

1131.

-

I

E FIRST SEVERAL WAVES OF NEWS CONCERNING A TECHNO-gical invention are invariably positive, even Utopian. This is so because theformation comes mostly from the people who stand to gain from societycing the favorable view. In the United States, these are corporate peopled their colleagues in science. Neither has a stake in reporting any down

side to the story. As a result, most people gain their early insights and understandings froman agenda provided by biased sources. Passive to the introduction of new technologies -whether cars, nuclear energy, television or, now, computers - by the time we begin to noticeproblems, the technologies have advanced to a point where it is difficult to do anvthingabout them. Obviously, our protection lies inand answers early in the process.

My own first exposure to computer societycame in 1941, when I was five years old. Myparents took me to the New York World's Fair.The most impressive exhibits were corporatevisions of an automated future. I remembergigantic dioramas of several-tiered techno-cities, clean, sparkling, everyone flying aroundwith little rocket packs on their backs. It wasivision of a world where human labor had

been eliminated by automation; at last we wouldbe free of unremitting toil. I think it was theDuPont exhibit which contained "the typicalhome of the future." Everything synthetic. Astaff of robots called by pushing buttons. Non-stop entertainments everywhere, including thatcomputer-TV-looking thing. From this you couldalso order your groceries, get your newspaper,and speak to friends anywhere in the world. Thepeople in the dioramas just sat there, smiling.

The Fair was a hit during hard times, when wewere in an awful war and consumer technologywas minimal. We longed for that DuPont dream.How could there be anything wrong with it?Wouldn't everyone want a work-free society?Couldn't technology deliver that? Didn't every-one like automated households where you.neverneeded to go outdoors? And what about thoseneat little robots? It was a kick to imagine it all.

developing our own agenda of questions

Those visions, of course, were advertising. Wehave seen a steady stream of it ever since. Lastyear, the microcomputer industry alone spentmore than $700 million in advertising, morethan half of it on television, placing the indus-try among the largest advertisers in the world.You have only to switch on your TV tonight toobserve the themes: computers set you free,they aid democracy, they bring you the powerto live your life on your own terms. Neitheryou, your business, nor your child can survivein the future without them. The archetypalcommercial is that Apple Macintosh spotshowing an Orwellian environment in whicha female runner, carrying a huge hammer,smashes the hated image of Big Brother. Ap-ple is saying that computers deliver freedom.They are anti-oppression. It's amazing to mehow many people accept that idea when itis at least arguable that the opposite resultobtains.

The $700 million ad expenditure doesn't includecompatible ads from other industries praisingcomputers. Auto commercials speak of com-puterized features. Military recruitment ads,bank ads, airline ads all celebrate their in-volvement with the latest in computers. Allthis advertising, added to the praise heaped

Two things influenced me (and, I bet, many other people) to stop watching television. One was Jerry Mander's 1978book Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television ($5.95 postpaid from William Morrow and Company, 6 Hen-derson Drive West Caldwell NJ 07006). The other was the personal computer, which ate up all my telvision time. Inthis article. Jerry Mander begins to apply the same perspectives to computers - both institutional and personal -that he applied to television seven years ago The 'grave doubts" unearthed here will articulate most of the concernsthat non-computer users have about the effects of these pseudointelligent machines on people and society. Jerry sayshe will refine and expand this material along with criticisms of other technologies in a forthcoming Sierra Club bookconcerning technological society and indigenous peoples Jerry's background is advertising; he's written many environ-mental-activist ads ("Should we flood the Sistine Chapel?"' during the last two decades and is now a seniorfellow atthe Public Media Center in San Francisco, a nonprofit advertising agency working only for other nonprofits.Illustrator Robert Crumb is well-known both as cartoonist and curmudgeon. He got the assignment partly to resonatewith the great illustrations he did for the Four Arguments excerpts we printed in 1976 Even with a new name thismagazine doesn't forget.We mocked Jerry when he revised a draft of this article in our offices, laboriously retyping it instead of entering it ona word processor. But he had the last laugh. The next day we lost a morning's worth of typesetting on this article- the computer went down before we could save the file. -Art Kleiner

27 GATE RVE ROAD SAUSAO CA 94965 II333

m~~~~ f

upon computers by scientists, industrial leaders,even politicians, combines to create an over-whelming climate of optimistic expectationwhich is now ubiquitous. Most people, nottechnically trained, not living in a societywhich views technology skeptically, and notpracticed in criticism, tend to accept the cor-porate agenda or to view the machines fromthe isolated perspective of their own interac-tions with them. For example, while workingon this article, I must have been asked tentimes by friends how I could argue that com-puters might be a problem when they are souseful to writers. Indeed they may be. Andyou can play some fun video games withthem, too. But is that the point?What we need is to develop a way of discuss-ing computers, and all technologies, fromwhat we might call a "holistic" perspective.The question must not be confined to whethera computer serves your organization well, orwhether it spits out perfectly-edited copy. Weneed to view the computer for the totality ofits effects upon society and life on Earth, andto ask questions which will bring forth thatpicture. How do computers affect concentra-tions of wealth and power? Who gains andwho loses because of their existence? Do com-puters have environmental effects? What arethey? What about diversity of culture andthought? The way we work, and who gets towork? What are the effects on what we knowand are capable of knowing? What is gainedand what is lost?What follows are some of my own first obser-vations. Six perspectives you won't find in theads. They are not meant as a complete case,by any means, but as a stimulus to others.

U ARE COMPUTERS "CLEAN"?

The microelectronics industry enjoys animage of extreme cleanliness, somehow abovethe usual pollutions, workplace dangers, andugliness of the old "smokestack" industries.These days it's virtually impossible to run forpublic office unless you visit Silicon Valleyand proclaim the industry as the crest of thenew age of superior technology. I thoughtone presidential candidate, Gary Hart, evenlooked a little like a computer: clean lines,well groomed, futuristic.A colleague of mine at Public Media Center,Jonathan Polansky, recently put it this way:

12

"It's as if computers are immaculately con-ceived, created whole, like a miracle, withoutwaste or grime." And Ellen Weiss of the Mu-seum of Modern Mythology said she felt itwas the silence of the computers that sustain-ed the image. "Everything seems to happen bymagic. No noise. No moving parts"' As usual,however, there's no free lunch. Computersseem to produce doubtful effects upon (1) thepeople who use them, (2) the workers whobuild them, and (3) the communities theplants call home.The effects upon users include such relativelyminor problems as fatigue, eye strain,migraines, and backaches, as well as moreserious problems like cataracts and, amongwomen who work with VDTs, reports ofmiscarriages and birii defects.Meanwhile, very little has been reported aboutthe effects upon people at the production endof the cycle. Lately, workers in Silicon Valleyhave been protesting that they too are exper-iencing high rates of miscarriages and otherreproductive system problems, as well as loss

The computer industry hasa high incidence of occupational

illness, more than threetimes the average

manufacturing industry

of hair, chronic asthma, and other disordersapparently resulting from handling the toxicchemicals and gases involved in computer chipmanufacture. According to attorney Ted Smithof the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition,"Workers and the general population are beingexposed to the most deadly chemicals thathave ever been synthesized." And Dr. JosephLa Don, Chief of the Division of Occupa-tional and Environmental Medicine at Univer-sity of California, San Francisco, has saidthat, "The computer industry has a high in-cidence of occupational illness, more thanthree times the average manufacturing indus-try." The computer industry has respondedto these complaints by moving much of itsmanufacturing abroad to Korea and SoutheastAsia, where workers are less well-informedas to why their hair falls out, and don't askfor much pay, either.

WHOLE EATH EVIEW JANUARY 1985

Computer manufacturing also produces envi-ronmental side effects. More than 2 milliongallons of acids and 500,000 gallons of sol-vents were used in Silicon Valley productionlast year, and it has found its way to someleaky toxic dump sites. High concentrationsof trichloroethylene recently showed up in thedrinking water of several communities inSilicon Valley. Some computer companies,while not admitting guilt, passed out truck-loads of free bottled water in the affectedareas. The Environmental Protection Agencyhas identified eighty such chemical spill sitesaround the country, some of which will beadded to the government's Superfund clean-up program.

COMPUTERS AND INFORMATIONFLOW: WHAT IS GAINED AND

_l WHAT IS LOST?

g e E ' g g g U .ES .' > . V l g, .2 . .

In the telecommunicating age, "information"is increasingly defined in terms of what can becollected and processed through machines. Thatcomputers, like television, are opaque to manykinds of information - sensory information,moods, feelings, meaning, context, among manyothers - is given little note or importance.And yet there are important consequences.Subtracting sensory information makes it dif-ficult to communicate the nuances of natureand nature-based culture or to communicatehuman essence. Subtracting feeling leaves in-formation, understanding, and decision-makingin the dry realm of the objective.That we don't take such consequencesseriously means we accept an informationhierarchy with objective data on top and sub-jective information on the bottom. If there'sa loss there, for example, of Indian cultureand values, so be it. A few years ago I men-tioned this in a printed debate with tele-communications guru Gene Youngblood. Hisresponse was, "Oh, no, not that old Sixtieschestnut, the Indians!"

* * *

At a recent conference of Circumpolar Peoples(native people who live in the northernmostparts of the planet), it was announced that theCanadian government was giving computersand computer training to the Inuit in northernCanada, purportedly as a useful tool withwhich to resist oil company incursion. Thecomputers would help the Inuit keep track of

27 GATE FVE ROAD SAUSU CA 94965 .

wildlife patterns so that with the printoutson hand, they'd more effectively argue theircase against the businessmen. The computerswould also help Inuit communities find workfor their people at development sites andmanage community affairs.The theory was that computers would put theInuit on the same information plane as thecorporations, who tend to view nature from anobjective perspective. Perhaps, but it's worthmentioning that this mode of reckoning theenvironment will sacrifice many dimensions ofinformation formerly used by Native people.Now the language will be in terms of "costbenefit," "sustainable yield," and "animalunits." The more powerful mythical, sensory,historic, and spiritual relationships withcreatures and the land, the dimensions whichsustained the Inuit for thousands of yearsand make them different from you and me,will be amputated. In the end, I believe, theInuit will begin to conceptualize the animalsin the same way as the corporations, andCanada will have achieved something morethan it originally suggested.

* * *

In California, if you wish to spend a nightcamping in a state park, it's necessary to makea reservation at a Ticketron office at least tendays beforehand, where the computer assignsyou an available site. What a conceptualchange just that act involves; nature was oncesomething you lived within and now it iswalled off and entry can be had only througha machine.I thought of this while reading the July 1984New Age Journal which contains a story on"The Computerized Forest:' by R.H. Ring. Helaments the conceptual change among U.S.Forest Service workers who now do their jobmainly via computers. The entire Forestsystem, says Ring, is now divided into"management units" containing "habitatcapacity" models which reduce the needs ofspecies to mathematical formulae. "Minimumviable populations" is one such formula. TheFlathead National Forest in Montana has aplanned "output" of 200 grizzly bears. Oldgrowth forest is called "accumulated capital'Hiking in Colorado's aspens at White RiverNational Forest is assigned a value: ninedollars per day.It ought to go without saying that certainelements of forests resist objectification: theunnameable feelings and moods, the subtle re-lationships. Forest managers once attemptedto include those dimensions, but as the man-agement concepts change, Ring reports thatthe Forest Service workers are also changing.

13.:p 3i

The new breed does not come to the task witha basic loyalty to and personal involvementwith the land, the animals, and trees. They areconcerned with abstractions like productiongoals and budgets. When mood, nuance, andfeeling are subtracted from the informationmodel, you have lost the elements by whichnature is able to communicate. The result isonly attractive to people who enjoy dry, pas-sionless data.These events at the U.S. Forest Service arecompatible with an already well-advancedchange in concepts of nature throughout thecountry. In my lifetime I have seen vaststretches of the United States lost to paving,freeways, and suburbs. There is actually lessnature now than there used to be, and it is fur-ther from view and further from inclusion inpeople's thoughts and feelings. Now the com-puter has succeeded in creating a conceptualseparation even among people who live direct-ly within the forests. Those who can't acceptthat change drop out and are replaced withthe sort of people who match the machines.In that sense, computers are an instrumentof cloning.

* * *

What do you think about the takeover ofcomputers in the school your kid goes to?Computers are replacing many teaching func-tions, and many teachers as well. In Californiathere are some 60,000 computers in class-rooms. "Computer literacy" is required inmany colleges and high schools. What isgained and what is lost by this process?There's been considerable praise for the com-puter's interactive quality. It gives the assign-ment, the kid reacts, and when all goes wellthe computer responds with praise and user-friendly encouragements. The kid feels reward-ed. Advocates point out that teachers are oftentoo busy to be that "personal." And there'sapparently a considerable satisfaction from af-fecting change on the computer screen, likeseeing yourself on television. Certain drillingprocedures in math, science, or English arewell suited to computer education models. Themachine can advance students to new levels atthe appropriate moments, or keep the educa-tion process going even where there is nohuman teacher on the same floor of the build-ing. Effective software programs teach readingand other skills to kids who might otherwisehave difficulty.It's not necessary to deny that machines canteach in order to ask what sort of kid resultsfrom this process, and what sort of knowledgeis emphasized. Marian Kester, writing in theToronto Globe and Mail, asked this: "If

14

children are separated from their parents byhours of TV, from their playmates by videogames, and from their teachers by teachingmachines, where are they supposed to learnto be human?"

Do kids get smarter from computers?Seymour Papert of MIT has said that learningcomputer programming leads to "conceptuallyclear thinking," and that children who do socan better deal with complex problems else-where. But Joseph Menosky, writing in Sciencemagazine, disagrees. He reports that Roy Peaof the Bank Street College of Education tested

If children are separatedfrom their parents by TV, from

playmates by video games,and from teachers by teaching

machines, where are theysupposed to learn to be human?

:,::, S 8MM1~ i:~:~:~:~:S~:~:~:~~i:~:~:~ liiiii~:~ ~ '~:~~~.l igE~i~:~i~~:::: ........... ..

kids who had learned LOGO, the computerlanguage from MIT, to see if those kidsorganized their work better or more clearly."According to Pea," said Menosky, "thechildren displayed 'production without com-prehension.' In other words, . .. children canseem to understand while only going throughthe motions. This is exactly consistent withstudies of college computer science majorswith thousands of hours of programming whoyet fail to understand the principles thatunderlie even brief programs. These studiesraise serious doubts about the sweeping claimsmade for the cognitive benefits of learningto program."

I fear that as computers are increasingly usedin education, three results will obtain. First, aswith the Inuit and foresters, a certain sort ofknowledge will tend to dominate, while othermore subtle forms recede. Like the wilderness,which has disappeared from the landscape andfrom our minds, many concepts will go downthe tubes. Secondly, as computers replaceteachers - which will certainly happen moreand more - the certainty of computer pro-grams will replace the subtlety of humanstudent-teacher interaction. I am not sayingthat all teachers are better, necessarily, for allsubjects at all times than computers. It's just

WHOLE EARH REIEW JANUARY 198S

IEDUCATtON

that something else goes on among the humansthat ain't in the machine. Third, as computerprograms replace teachers, a great degree ofuniformity will likely emerge. Even now, cor-porations provide a tremendous amount of"educational materials" to schools. When theycan also provide the computer programs thatevery kid interacts with, especially in the absenceof human beings to mitigate the process, wewill be much closer to an official, unified fieldof knowledge, narrower than at present (thoughperhaps deeper in a few areas like science) andconsistent with corporate values.

j DO COMPUTERS FREE USFROM TOIL?

JI~DO·l:~~:r;:::~·s::~~ CO MPUTERS:··:::::: FRE Uq~ ~~~~~~··::~~:;;ts:~::iii~ii~

At the 1940 World's Fair, American Industrysaid that computers and automation wouldeliminate toil, freeing us to pursue highergoals. In the 1980s they say that the computerindustry will open new careers and new kindsof industry. In reality, both claims are justadvertising pitches attuned to concerns of themoment. What automation and computationactually do achieve is the elimination of a lotof jobs, liberating human beings to stand inunemployment lines.

27 GATE fVE ROAD SUSALTO CA 4965

That optimistic vision of a work-free society,with machines doing the producing, couldonly be realized if the economic benefits ofautomation and computation were somehowshared among the populace. We would need arevolution for that. In capitalist society, thebenefits obtain to the people who own themachines. Now they can get the job donewithout pesky human beings demanding in-creased wages, safety on the job, health plans,and profit sharing. As my friend Jack Edel-son, who runs a small manufacturing businessin San Francisco, said, "The worst thing aboutcomputers is that they're going to eliminatethe middle class. Blue collar workers are losingtheir jobs to robots; they can't buy housesanymore, and we're soon going to be a countrywith more rich people and a lot more poorpeople. Big industry says automation is goingto produce more jobs, but that's baloney.There are new jobs around, but they're atMcDonald's at minimum wage."What Edelson learned on the job manyacademics support. Drs. Henry Levin andRussell W. Rumberger of Stanford University'sInstitute for Research on Educational Financeand Government wrote this: "The evidencesuggests that high tech is not the place wheremost new jobs will be found, nor will hightech require a vast upgrading of the skills ofthe American labor force. To the contrary ...the proliferation of high technology industriesis far more likely to reduce the skill re-

15337

... ......'''··': ·S:·:; ·;.~'f. . ........................... ........ ... ....;2 ~ ::~:::::::::::::::··:'·'::~,·'~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ . ... .............. :~.~:: ···s·s·:; ~... . ..... . ....... . .···: · : :·..;...:.l.::~:.:.r..:. .. ... ..:.. ·........ · ·::·;:.: ·.;·:;:.. . 2.. ... .......... ..........:.'.:'~:: 0.:::;;~::::::::~:·;X::

THs JOE MARK3T skills to perform (what have been) highlysophisticated functions ..

Diana Roose, Research Director of the Na-tional Association of Working Women(9 to 5), told me that the TV commercialsdepicting joyful secretaries, or the ones show-ing the computer as somehow liberating, wereextremely misleading. "Since the introductionof the computer into office work, job designhas changed in negative ways," she said. "Thetyping and retyping part gets easier, but work-ers hate many aspects of these machines...Secretaries now have to deal with productionquotas, since performance on the job is eval-uated much more in strictly objective terms.It used to be that a clerical worker would alsobe evaluated for her or his personal, humancontribution of energy and ideas. Now there ishardly any variety in office work. The jobs aredead-ended, and because the human connectionis eliminated, jobs are also less secure. Somepeople are calling office work the electronicassembly line."

quirements for jobs in the U.S. economy thanto upgrade them (thereby lowering wages)."Last year the Labor Department projectedthat jobs for computer programmers wouldgrow between 74 percent and 148 percent(during the '80s) while overall job growthwould only be 22 percent. But the percentagesare misleading. The total number of new jobsfor computer programmers is expected to be150,000. Some 1.3 million new jobs are pro-jected for janitors, nurse's aides, and orderlies.That's nine unskilled jobs in these categoriesalone for every computer programmer. In fact,no high tech job even makes the LaborDepartment's top 20 in terms of total numbersof jobs. ,

"New jobs for data processing machinemechanics will increase 148 percent, the fastestgrowing job category. But that large gaintranslates into an increase of fewer than100,000 new jobs, while 800,000 new jobs areprojected for fast-food workers and kitchenhelpers alone."Neither will the high tech transformation ofexisting jobs create demands for increasinglysophisticated work skills ... Studies suggestthat the new technologies provide opportuni-ties to further simplify and routinize worktasks and to reduce the opportunities forworker individuality and judgment. In suchdiverse areas as office work, data processing,drafting, wholesale and retail trade and com-puter programming, microcomputers are mak-ing it possible to utilize persons with lower

1633.

COMPUTERSAND THE SCALE OF WARFARE

.i . .. ... ....... ... . ....... .... . ... . .. . . .. . . .. ..::! :..

It was possible to annihilate the world beforethe invention of computers but it was far moredifficult than at present, and much less likely.The computer has made possible a degree ofmilitary centralization that never before ex-isted. Generals sitting underground somewhereoutside Washington, D.C. can, at one moment,observe the position and state of readiness ofvirtually all U.S. military hardware around theglobe, as well as a high percentage of Russia's.Russian generals can do likewise.

From military central it is also possible to fireall this stuff and track its progress via com-puterized displays not unlike those shown infilms like War Games. In fact, the experiencefor the war managers is now similar to playinga giant video game - following electronicblips on a massive screen - abstract, cerebral,removed from direct involvement at least untilthe things finally start exploding. One couldmake the case that this manner of warringitself makes war more likely since it separateshumans from the consequences of their acts,unlike the days when you put a bayonetthrough a person's body and watched himbleed. And when enemy missiles are only blips

WHOLE EARTH REVIEW JANURY 1985

- I

I-

on a screen, impossible to verify by actual obser-vation, there is always a chance of error. Morethan once our computer early warning systemshave mistaken flights of birds for missiles.But the greatest danger is in the way com-puters minimize the time available for humandecision making at critical moments. Evenafter the invention of atomic bombs, world-wide destruction was a difficult job mainlybecause of the time it took to achieve. Youhad to load up bombers and fly them greatdistances at relatively unimpressive speeds.This allowed several hours for human inter-vention from both sides. Even if one bombwas dropped, there might still be time to callthings off before all the bombs dropped.

Computers and rocketry have changed that.They have combined to drastically shorten thetime between the decision to push the buttonand the achievement of the final result. War-heads no longer fly in creaky bombers, but oncomputer-guided missiles, targeted and shotinto space from computer central at astound-ing speed. And there's now the incentive to fireall missiles at once, since an enemy can soquickly react. Once a war begins, total de-struction is now the likely outcome.

Right now, U.S. and Russian missiles are sixminutes from each other's borders. If the head-quarters computer suggests an enemy attack,six minutes are available to verify the accuracyof the data (difficult), locate and inform thePresident, and then, in the time remaining, forthe President to make a decision. In such cir-cumstances, can you call that a "decision"? Itwould have to be pre-planned. There'd beno time for careful consideration of creativeoptions. In such a modern computer war, hu-man involvement, while still nominally part ofthe process, at the most critical momentsbecomes so limited as to be effectivelymeaningless.

It's in recognition of the difficulty of humandecision-making in modern warfare that welately hear talk of "launch on warning"(immediate launch of missiles at the first com-puter warning) as a viable policy. The Sovietshave actually threatened this in the Europeantheatre in response to our Cruise and Pershingmissiles, though U.S. officials call it a bluff.Whether the Russians do institute "launch onwarning" or they don't, the point is theycould. So could we. The technical capacity isthere for people to be dropped completely outof the decision loop, leaving us with a kind ofautomatic war: our computer program vs.theirs. Software war.

Can we blame computers for the above scen-arios? Most people, even if they have perceived

27 GATE RVE ROAD SAUSAUTO CA 94965

a relationship between computers and theimminence of war, hold the computers them-selves harmless. "People invent the machines,"is the common wisdom, ard "people push thebuttons." And yet it is a simple fact that ifthere were no computers, the process of engag-ing in war would be a much more drawn-outproposition, with a lot more time for humanbeings to change their minds or seek alterna-tives. In fact, it is only because of computersthat this virtually instant war - especially atthe worldwide level, producing total annihila-tion -. even enters the realm of possibility.

When evaluating a technology, and seeking toarticulate the way it changes the circumstancesof existence, we must always consider the worstpossible use of that technology. Only then isour judgment informed. In America we tendto speak only of the positive potentials,because that's the way inventions have been in-troduced and sold to us. And yet the worstpossible use of computers - as instruments ofholocaust - has already been planned and isat least as likely to be the final outcome of thecomputer age as is the achievement of somekind of pure democracy.

IF SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL, WHATABOUT SLOW? THE COMPUTER ROLEIN THE RATE OF ACCELERATION.

....:::::: : , : :: : :.' : :.: : :..: :.a : : ::.: :

In recent years, there has been a turnaround inthe idea that bigger is better. We now havepolitical movements based on an "appropriatescale" for technology which allows for livingin balance with nature. Still most of us havenot noticed that speed is a dimension of scale.Today's largest institutions - the military, thecorporate, the bureaucratic - can be only aslarge as permitted by their ability to commu-nicate among their diverse parts quickly, withmind-boggling amounts of data. Telecommuni-cations have put the equation in those terms,shattering the limits of physical size that onceexisted. Now an entity can spread itself out-ward to encompass the entire planet. Nationalboundaries are anomalies.

As the computer has sped up the informationcycle for institutional activity, so has it donefor human beings. As society increasingly em-phasizes computers, we are receiving an ever-increasing amount of data, most of it unuse-able in any practical sense. As life around usaccelerates, we also accelerate, but it's not our

17

minds which experience the acceleration. It isour nervous systems.

« * *

I have often heard video games praised because"they speed up hand-eye coordination." Inresponse I ask why it's a good thing to speedup hand-eye coordination when the only realvalue, save perhaps for a professional basket-ball player, is to get up to speed for the nextcomputer function. Ronald Reagan has notmissed the point. He recently publicly praisedvideo games as good training for a new gener-ation of bomber pilots whose task is similarto video game problems.For 400,000 generations, human hand-eyecoordination was attuned to an environmentwhich operated at what you might call "naturalspeed." Everything that human beings hadto deal with moved at speeds appropriate toour abilities, or vice versa. It would have hadto be that way for our species to survive;humans evolve to keep up with the taskat hand.With the industrial revolution, many thingsbegan moving at mechanical speed. As thenatural environment was paved over, and ashuman beings moved life into human-createdenvironments, the natural rhythms with whichwe formerly reacted gave way to industrialrhythms. We learned to interact with mechani-cal speed, as any assembly-line worker knows.And most auto drivers. Now that machinesmove at electronic speed, the wheel of activityturns faster, with us on it.Video games are good training for the fasterworld. When you are playing a video game,your goal is to merge with the computer pro-gram. The electronic symbols on the screenenter the brain, pass through the nervoussystem, and stimulate the "fight or flight"reaction which still lives in us and which hereexpresses itself in the hands. Very little think-ing is needed or used in this process. The ob-ject is to respond without thought, instantly.A skillful video game player stimulates thecomputer program to go faster, and as the cir-cle speeds up (computer program to nervoussystem to hands to machine to computer pro-gram) the player becomes as one with themachine. They become connected in one fluidcycle, aspects of each other. Over time, andwith practice, the abilities of the human beingdevelop to approximate the computer pro-gram. Evolution is furthered by this sort ofinteraction, but it is of a notably differentform than prior evolutionary processes. Whereevolution was once an interaction betweenhumans and nature, it now takes place be-

18 Ads

tween humans and human artifacts. We co-evolve with the environment which we havecreated - with our machines. We co-evolve,that is, with ourselves. It's a kind of in-breeding, and it makes us think nature isincreasingly irrelevant to us.Video games accelerated a process that hasbeen directly stimulated by a generation oftelevision viewing. Most poeple think of thetwo as different because TV looks "passive"while video games involve interaction. But

Computers minimizethe time available

for human decision-makingat critical moments.

I have argued for a long time that TV, while itpacifies the brain, speeds up the nervoussystem. The Australian National Universityreport on TV as a cause of hyperactivityamong children explained that a kid sittingsilently watching TV might see people punch-ing or killing each other. This stimulates the"fight or flight" reaction of the nervoussystem, but since it's television, a physicalreaction would be absurd so the body remainsinert and the feelings are suppressed. Whenthe set goes off, the saved-up energy burstsforth in wild, formless hyperactive behavior. Ifyou have kids, you have probably seen this.Also, when watching TV, you live in a muchmore rapid perceptual universe. Rapidlychanging images, 15 edits per minute, incredi-ble condensation of time, movement backwardin time and forward, cartoons on and off, out-door images and then suddenly indoors,music, whirling, rising images, a potpourri ofhyperactive stimuli most of which is impossi-ble in ordinary life. This is also the case withvideo games and to some extent computersin general.

An average child who watches television forfive plus hours per day, then plays video games,is living within a rapid perceptual universe formuch of his waking life. When that whirling-spinning-exploding world is turned off, he orshe is left in real life, the room, the house, amuch slower world. Boring by comparison. Ifhe or she then goes outside into nature - well,nature is really slow. It barely moves at all.It takes an extreme degree of calm to perceivethings happening in nature, and I suspect wemay be producing a generation of people too

WHOLE EARTH REVIEW JANUARY 1985

I E 1111111111110

`:. '...:.......:~:.:.:.:... . ..:.:. .... :.::...:.;..:.:.::::::.:::::

sped-up to attune themselves to slower naturalrhythms. So, back into the house. Where's thatvideo game? Get it back on, ahhh .. . backup to speed.Television. Video games. Computers. Walk-mans. The kids carrying those big radios downthe street. And the street. Fast moving infor-mation there too. They are all connected aspart of a speed-up process that is spinning ourlives faster and faster. The final product willbe a subtle one. Another degree of separationfrom the environment. Alienation.

As I was writing the above, my friend Marc Kas-ky wandered in, read a little over my shoulder,and said, "Listen, don't forget to tell them this.Computers don't only speed up people, butthey interact with other technologies to speedup the rate at which other negative industrialprocesses take place. They're used from satel-lites and airplanes to locate resources in theground and ocean. Computers, space technol-ogy, and infrared photography have com-bined to turn up the speed of the destructionof nature."

S6 DO COMPUI'ERS HAVE POLITICS?

~:........... ..~:::wa- m emiii ~#:..::: :',i iiiiiii 1i i:: llg goi !

A few months ago I attended the First Bio-regional Congress in Kansas City - 250 peo-ple working toward the disintegration of cen-tral political power. This group favored localcontrol, economic self-sufficiency, and smallscale, nature-based principles. "Green" com-munities. A number of participants advocateda role for computers in building "networks"among the bioregions, thereby facilitatingrapid exchanges of information. Though thismight create some centralization, it was arguedthat computers are a "neutral tool" whichcould be used with equal benefit by peoplewhose goals are anathema to the large institu-tions that may have invented the machine andthus far dominated its application. This is atempting idea. We can take their invention andwith a kind of jiu jitsu, turn it against itscreators. A similar view is held by the political"left" in the U.S., which argues the uses of atool are solely determined by thle ideologies ofthe people who control it. Technology isneutral. The machine itself cannot have anybuilt-in ideology.This assumption, the neutrality of technology,is a basic paradigm that most Americans ac-

27 GATE FIVE ROAD SAUSAU CA 9496S

cept. And yet, it is a preposterous notion, andone which furthers our continuing passivitytoward the onrush of new machinery. Thesimplest examples to discuss are nuclear andsolar energy. Are they "neutral" technologies?By reason of the cost, complexity, and dangerof nuclear energy, it can only be undertakenby huge institutions. You and your neighborscould not get together and build a nuclearplant down the block. The effects of nuclearenergy are longterm: 250,000 years, requiringthat future societies make many decisions ofa predetermined sort to deal with the leavingsof what is being created now.The alternative, solar energy, can easily bemanaged by a few people and operated on avery small scale. It is possible to design cen-tralized solar energy facilities, but it's relativelydifficult. The technology is more efficient onthe smaller scale. So, in comparing the twoenergy systems, it's fair to describe nuclearenergy, as Leopold Kohr has, as an "appro-priate technology for a society interested incentralized solutions." Solar energy, mean-while, is appropriate for a society interestedin decentralized solutions. These are politicaltendencies which are built into the technolo-gies. Such tendencies can be found in everytechnology, if we seek them out.What about computers? At first, computershave the look of a decentralized instrument.You can have one in your home and get it todo things in service to your life and your pro-jects, though, for most people, not as many

_. a,,l ~1931T

~~~~~~1 w- ·w

things as expected. If you are a writer, wordprocessors relieve much of your drudge work.Computers can benefit small groups, smallbusinesses, political activisits, and biore-gionalists. Organizations can store informa-tion, network with other groups, process maillists, prepare clean copy, keep membershiplists, keep accounts, and the staff can playvideo games in the lunch hour. But I don'tthink this is the way to think about the issue.It's not who benefits, but who benefits most?

People interested in decentralized politicalsolutions would be better off if computerswere never introduced into society. For alltheir aid to small scale operations, computershelp the largest institutions the most. Theymake certain large institutions possible thatweren't before, and they serve the economicsof scale the same way as other technologieslike mechanical farming, pesticides, satellitecommunications. Computers may be a neutraltechnology, but they are quite a bit moreneutral for some than others.

Larger enterprise can afford more computersthan smaller operations, more sophisticatedones, operated by better-trained staff, andwith more interfaces among the computersthemselves. The larger the scale of the oper-ation, the more parts and pieces that mustbe integrated, and the greater output percomputer unit.

If you operate a small business, such as amedium-sized food market, a computer canhelp with inventory control, accounts payable,accounts receivable, payroll, taxes, sources ofsupply, and price. But while the small businessis aided in the short run, the large supermar-ket chain can use computers to undertakemore operations at a wider level: buying andselling, price competitions among regions,shipping coordination, inventory controls ata national or international scale, credit opera-tions, market analysis, profit analysis, employeeproductivity analysis, shelf-movement analysis,as well as the usual routine payroll and ac-counts management tasks. It would be fairto guess that a large chain like Safeway couldbe aided by computers at least twice as muchas the smaller operator. This reflects itselfin price differentials on the shelves, consumerattitudes about efficiency, varieties and prof-itability of items stocked, overall profit, andmore. In the end, the larger institution growsmore dominant and swallows the smaller.

The Fall 1984 issue of Hermes, the publicationof the Columbia University Graduate BusinessSchool, was largely devoted to a report of thehundreds of ways that computers are now usedin large-scale business operation, especially at

20 «/l

the multinational level. In fact, one third ofthe curriculum of the Business School is nowbeing urgently revised to give a major role toinformation technology. The functions dis-cussed include corporate relations, corporatefinance, accounting, international financialmarketing, consumer marketing, managementscience, and operations management. Simula-tion games on the computers will now preparestudents for the "real world" of multinationalactivity. Some games will include forecastingof economic trends in various nations, labor-management negotiation strategies, statisticalanalyses, and game options, such as abandoningcertain countries to move to other labor mar-kets. (One wonders whether "subjective factors"such as consequences to long-time workerswho are fired are ever mixed in, and how?)

For all their aidto small scale operations,

computers help the largestinstitutions the most.

Computers not only aid today's multinationalcorporate enterprises, they make them possible.International financial institutions, for exam-ple, needing to keep track instantaneously withmillions of pieces of information from all overthe world, simply could not operate as they dotoday without computers. That they are nowable to relate instantly to all parts of the worldhas popped these institutions into a new di-mension outside even such huge locales asnations. In a way, today's multinational en-terprises are not located anywhere except inthe computer itself. Looked at from that per-spective, it's clear that the computer is not inequal service to all parties. While you andyour colleagues are networking about corpor-ate behavior in a forest near you, that samecorporation is moving information among thou-sands of its disparate pieces all over the world.The machine helps them more than it helpsyou. It's not neutral. And when a new, bettercomputer is built, they will have it first.People involved in political movements towarddecentralization may find computers beneficialin their individual tasks, but it would be avery grave error to celebrate the existence ofcomputers in the world. In my view, decen-tralists, ecologists, and people interested inprogressive reform of any sort would be wiseto address the very existence of computers asan urgent and relevant issue in itself. a

WHOLE EARTH REVIEW ANUW 198S

_ M

`-:2·:·::::::�::·:.:I··:':':f· ·�5··'�'' ''' '5�:��:�:�':·;·�·:·;':S'::;I%;:;:;r;:�:'-· ··kl::;�·:·:··�·�·�·:s:.;.;.t:::·:s.:·. �:i:.-.-. �f�EO

·:·:·t:�:::::::t.:::i:::::i;;.�:: ':"2��s.s-r.-. zz��·i·i�·.�s i�t;

SPECIAL INAUGURAL REPRINT ISSUE: INFORMATION ENVIRONMENT TOOLS

AND IDEAS Whole Earth Review Dedicated to the Incoming Administration 20 January

1996 - Link PagePrevious What Have You Got to Hide? (Spring 1986)

Next Public Image (January 1985)

Return to Electronic Index Page