Slashdot Mirror
Autonomic Code not About Replacing Humans
An anonymous reader writes "IT professionals can automate IT management tasks by delegating them to the system, and can plan the degree of automation that is right for them and how manual managers and autonomic managers work together. This article discusses the role of the humans, or lack there of, in autonomic systems. The article claims that isn't about replacing people with machines." How have other readers experienced the use of autonomic code both good and bad?
Most anything a machine can do can be done by throwing enough humans at it. An oversimplification probably, but there are things you don't want humans doing, there is always something else a human can be doing. Plus there isn't that pesky ~18 year dev time for a human being. In old days they used to have a person devoted to operanting an elevator, now there isn't one. Somehow I don't think that was about replacing humans either.
But aren't most IT departments drastically understaffed as it is? We rely heavily on automated processes to handle the more labor intensive and repetitive checks and operations we carry out on a daily basis. It frees up our staff for project planning, design, and troubleshooting stuff that's failed. Would *you* want to manually check 5000 systems for operational status every 10 minutes? I'd have to hire hundreds of people to handle that kind of load, so in a sense, sure it is 'replacing humans', but give me a break.
We could all ride in rickshaw's too, pulled by humans, instead of buying 'auto-mobiles' to automate carrying 4-8 people or what have you...should we be worried about cars stealing jobs of rickshaw pullers?
Why do we assume that if a computer takes over a task that a human once did, that human has been "replaced?" Really what has been "replaced" is the acting agent. It is sort of sad that we equate someone's job with their actually person.
Frankly, when you are in charge of a project you live and die by the software and hardware decisions you make. When you choose good software and hardware you are indispensible and loved. If you choose really bad hardware and software for your application you are slowly tortured in a chaotic development cycle where you have wedged the project into a hacked system by buying something that does not suit your needs, you were not the right person for the job. It seems to me like servers just got smart, the decision is now a no-brainer so long as cost is appropriate, your application requires this system, the system can be trusted to configure everything properly, etc... You will not lose your job, your job will change into taskmaster of binary slaves. Now if the servers start asking why they do all the work and you get all the credit, then I would be complaining about them taking my job.
Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism