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The Mechanized Future
Michael J. Ross and Dan Sisson write "In our increasingly mechanized world, we repeatedly hear promises that every new digital product, computerized service, or other form of technology, will make our lives easier — bestowing greater leisure, health, and happiness. Yet are any of those promises being fulfilled? Are we not instead becoming slaves to the very "conveniences" that we struggle to master? These weighty questions are addressed by Steve Talbott in his book Devices of the Soul: Battling for Our Selves in an Age of Machines." Read below for the rest of Michael and Dan's review.
Devices of the Soul
author
Steve Talbott
pages
281
publisher
O'Reilly Media
rating
7
reviewer
Michael J. Ross and Dan Sisson
ISBN
0596526806
summary
A passionate warning against technology overtaking our lives
Published by O'Reilly Media in April 2007, under ISBNs 0596526806 and 978-0596526801, Devices of the Soul argues that we are now blindly accepting technology with little or no countervailing efforts or even awareness, and we are paying a terrible toll, both individually and as a society.
From the day a child of the 21st century begins his education, he is confronted with mind-numbing statistics, numbers, and facts via the computer — which he must accept. Perhaps even more important, he must master its "techniques" as the sine qua non tool to be successful in life. This is not a voyage of self-discovery; it is a demand by "the system" that the individual accept a way of viewing the world that invades, conquers, and ultimately controls his life. The child will learn most of what he knows with it, play with it, talk with it, and allow his thinking to be ruled by it — all because it is the magical machine that gives him access to the world's knowledge, e.g., the Internet.
By the time this child makes the transition from high school to college, he will be required to accept a curriculum that too often lacks meaning and content, that fails to allow him to satisfy his own curiosity about the challenges facing humanity, and is, moreover, expensive and will likely lead to indebtedness. There are few alternatives to this gauntlet, especially if one wishes to belong to the 'credentialed society', which determines modern man's measure of success.
Education is only the first stage in the numbing of our consciousness. What follows is built upon this edifice. Our acceptance of machines — ubiquitous in our everyday lives — provides our food, transportation, entertainment, information, and prestige — in sum, everything we need to function in modern society.
Talbott shows how the machines we use create a grand illusion, namely, that by having every technological gadget, we will save time and money, and be able to spend more time with our family and loved ones. However, that leisure time never materializes. The technology costs more, not less. Consequently, we find ourselves in a perpetual struggle to preserve a bare minimum of human emotions and instincts.
The next stage in the individual's life is integration into the mature world of the computerized economy, i.e., when he becomes a "stakeholder." He accepts a world that does away with human values and subordinates him to "market values." Furthermore, he is bound to lose his sense of privacy.
It follows that almost everyone willingly accepts that advancement in life and career increasingly requires having electronic conversations with machines — and eventually robots — that will never ask us what our personal assumptions and/or values are, and have no intentions of doing so. In short, our resistance to the machine fades. It is "far easier to assign the intelligence solely to the machine than to seek out those tortured pathways" to the human urges within us. Society itself, not just the individual, says Talbott, "is unsurprisingly assuming the character of our technology."
The outcome is grim: "Historically, there appears to be an element of tragedy in all this. We stumble along in ignorance and, by the time we realize the subtle ways our actions have caught up with us, the damage and loss are already irrevocable."
Technology expresses itself in numbers and computations divorced from human values. Efficiency is nearly the sole criterion by which modern corporations make decisions, and it is no accident that these two ideas, human values versus efficiency, are mutually exclusive. In objecting to the mess we humans have created, Talbott notes: "If you want human values, if you want qualitative distinctions, then your theoretical constructs must retain those values and distinctions every step of the way. The minute you allow them to collapse into number alone, you have no way to get back from there to the qualitative world."
Despite these tragic overtones, he argues that we can and must return to that qualitative world where we can realize our deepest human qualities. We can retain our humanity in connection to the natural world, despite using tools skillfully, as exemplified by the wily trickster Odysseus, as well as Tomo, a member of the Waorani Indians in the Amazon jungles of Ecuador who demonstrated phenomenal knowledge of his world.
His prescription for humanity's emergence from this present Dark Age also includes developing a strong sense of history. We must realize how other humans expressed their individuality, and realized their hopes and dreams. Despite the fact that Americans generally have little appreciation for or cognizance of history, there may come a time when reading history may be the only place to find models of human behavior that went against the technophilic grain.
Interspersed throughout his analysis, Talbott offers suggestions to arrest this headlong rush into a mechanized future. They tend to be general in nature, such as urging us to seek a sense of "place," and to engage in conversations with our fellow men (and even our machines) to remind them of our human needs. Echoing Edward Abbey, who attempted to alert us to the environmental disasters of the 1960's with books like The Monkey Wrench Gang, Talbott writes, "This may at times require us to throw a wrench into the machinery in order to serve the worthy human intentions behind it."
Despite Talbott's skills as a writer, the book, sadly, has some substantial flaws. Two of the most obvious are the overly long digressions into the stories of Jacques Lusseyran and Martha Beck, which admittedly are fascinating, but delay the presentation of more topical material. Furthermore, they suggest that Talbott is misidentifying the emotional power of those stories as proof of his arguments, and thus committing the common error of anecdotal evidence. Even worse, they border on romanticizing blindness and Down syndrome, respectively.
He also fails to address a major factor in our growing discontent with the Information Age: the nonstop ratcheting up of our expectations, driven largely by marketing on the seller side, and a lack of philosophic questioning on the consumer side.
A common pattern in the book is a deep criticism of any given aspect or consequence of technology, to the extent that Talbott appears to be arguing that we should do away with it completely. But he often then wraps up his analysis by briefly contradicting the earlier implication, and stating that he does not believe the phenomenon at issue should be eradicated. This schizophrenic reasoning mixes bold, blanket criticisms with assurances to the contrary. Yet one may argue that, with so much of current social discourse failing to question technology, its critics must never err with overly cautious warnings.
There are other problems in his analysis: He invests much hope in what he terms "conversation," "meaning," and "value" — not clearly specified, and yet spoken of highly. He fears machine intelligence (and perhaps rightly so), and doubts its viability, but fails to understand its potential for emergence. Even though a former computer programmer, he does not seem to understand the value of abstraction, and the possibility that it can be used beneficially, without being considered the only source of important knowledge. Lastly, it is odd that he does not cite the pioneering work of a well-known predecessor, Jacques Ellul, in The Technological Society.
Nonetheless, the issues that Talbott raises are of critical importance — so much so that they make his lapses of logic that much more maddening. Because so much is at stake, our efforts at analyzing, understanding, and solving these problems, must be proportionally energetic and effective. Technophiles may dismiss his entire effort based upon the book's weaknesses, and consequently miss out on the valuable gist of his viewpoint. Similarly, impatient readers in our age of limited attention spans, might not make it through the aforesaid tangents, and likewise miss out.
The issues that he discusses should be raised more often and more loudly, with broader acceptance and expansion of the debate and its importance. Otherwise, we will continue our robotic march deeper into a future that is controlled more by soulless devices, and less by skeptical humans. If we fail completely to change course, we may be saddled with a life that is intolerable to the human spirit.
Devices of the Soul is an insightful, disturbing, imperfect, eloquent, and important contribution to what may ultimately become the most critical debate in the intensifying conflict between humans and our technological creations: Humans may survive, but will our humanity?
Michael J. Ross is a Web developer, freelance writer, and the editor of PristinePlanet.com's free newsletter. Dan Sisson is an adjunct professor at Eastern Washington University, where he has taught technology courses for the past eight years; he is an authority on Thomas Jefferson, is author of The American Revolution of 1800, and is currently building and living in a replica of Monticello.
You can purchase Devices of the Soul from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
From the day a child of the 21st century begins his education, he is confronted with mind-numbing statistics, numbers, and facts via the computer — which he must accept. Perhaps even more important, he must master its "techniques" as the sine qua non tool to be successful in life. This is not a voyage of self-discovery; it is a demand by "the system" that the individual accept a way of viewing the world that invades, conquers, and ultimately controls his life. The child will learn most of what he knows with it, play with it, talk with it, and allow his thinking to be ruled by it — all because it is the magical machine that gives him access to the world's knowledge, e.g., the Internet.
By the time this child makes the transition from high school to college, he will be required to accept a curriculum that too often lacks meaning and content, that fails to allow him to satisfy his own curiosity about the challenges facing humanity, and is, moreover, expensive and will likely lead to indebtedness. There are few alternatives to this gauntlet, especially if one wishes to belong to the 'credentialed society', which determines modern man's measure of success.
Education is only the first stage in the numbing of our consciousness. What follows is built upon this edifice. Our acceptance of machines — ubiquitous in our everyday lives — provides our food, transportation, entertainment, information, and prestige — in sum, everything we need to function in modern society.
Talbott shows how the machines we use create a grand illusion, namely, that by having every technological gadget, we will save time and money, and be able to spend more time with our family and loved ones. However, that leisure time never materializes. The technology costs more, not less. Consequently, we find ourselves in a perpetual struggle to preserve a bare minimum of human emotions and instincts.
The next stage in the individual's life is integration into the mature world of the computerized economy, i.e., when he becomes a "stakeholder." He accepts a world that does away with human values and subordinates him to "market values." Furthermore, he is bound to lose his sense of privacy.
It follows that almost everyone willingly accepts that advancement in life and career increasingly requires having electronic conversations with machines — and eventually robots — that will never ask us what our personal assumptions and/or values are, and have no intentions of doing so. In short, our resistance to the machine fades. It is "far easier to assign the intelligence solely to the machine than to seek out those tortured pathways" to the human urges within us. Society itself, not just the individual, says Talbott, "is unsurprisingly assuming the character of our technology."
The outcome is grim: "Historically, there appears to be an element of tragedy in all this. We stumble along in ignorance and, by the time we realize the subtle ways our actions have caught up with us, the damage and loss are already irrevocable."
Technology expresses itself in numbers and computations divorced from human values. Efficiency is nearly the sole criterion by which modern corporations make decisions, and it is no accident that these two ideas, human values versus efficiency, are mutually exclusive. In objecting to the mess we humans have created, Talbott notes: "If you want human values, if you want qualitative distinctions, then your theoretical constructs must retain those values and distinctions every step of the way. The minute you allow them to collapse into number alone, you have no way to get back from there to the qualitative world."
Despite these tragic overtones, he argues that we can and must return to that qualitative world where we can realize our deepest human qualities. We can retain our humanity in connection to the natural world, despite using tools skillfully, as exemplified by the wily trickster Odysseus, as well as Tomo, a member of the Waorani Indians in the Amazon jungles of Ecuador who demonstrated phenomenal knowledge of his world.
His prescription for humanity's emergence from this present Dark Age also includes developing a strong sense of history. We must realize how other humans expressed their individuality, and realized their hopes and dreams. Despite the fact that Americans generally have little appreciation for or cognizance of history, there may come a time when reading history may be the only place to find models of human behavior that went against the technophilic grain.
Interspersed throughout his analysis, Talbott offers suggestions to arrest this headlong rush into a mechanized future. They tend to be general in nature, such as urging us to seek a sense of "place," and to engage in conversations with our fellow men (and even our machines) to remind them of our human needs. Echoing Edward Abbey, who attempted to alert us to the environmental disasters of the 1960's with books like The Monkey Wrench Gang, Talbott writes, "This may at times require us to throw a wrench into the machinery in order to serve the worthy human intentions behind it."
Despite Talbott's skills as a writer, the book, sadly, has some substantial flaws. Two of the most obvious are the overly long digressions into the stories of Jacques Lusseyran and Martha Beck, which admittedly are fascinating, but delay the presentation of more topical material. Furthermore, they suggest that Talbott is misidentifying the emotional power of those stories as proof of his arguments, and thus committing the common error of anecdotal evidence. Even worse, they border on romanticizing blindness and Down syndrome, respectively.
He also fails to address a major factor in our growing discontent with the Information Age: the nonstop ratcheting up of our expectations, driven largely by marketing on the seller side, and a lack of philosophic questioning on the consumer side.
A common pattern in the book is a deep criticism of any given aspect or consequence of technology, to the extent that Talbott appears to be arguing that we should do away with it completely. But he often then wraps up his analysis by briefly contradicting the earlier implication, and stating that he does not believe the phenomenon at issue should be eradicated. This schizophrenic reasoning mixes bold, blanket criticisms with assurances to the contrary. Yet one may argue that, with so much of current social discourse failing to question technology, its critics must never err with overly cautious warnings.
There are other problems in his analysis: He invests much hope in what he terms "conversation," "meaning," and "value" — not clearly specified, and yet spoken of highly. He fears machine intelligence (and perhaps rightly so), and doubts its viability, but fails to understand its potential for emergence. Even though a former computer programmer, he does not seem to understand the value of abstraction, and the possibility that it can be used beneficially, without being considered the only source of important knowledge. Lastly, it is odd that he does not cite the pioneering work of a well-known predecessor, Jacques Ellul, in The Technological Society.
Nonetheless, the issues that Talbott raises are of critical importance — so much so that they make his lapses of logic that much more maddening. Because so much is at stake, our efforts at analyzing, understanding, and solving these problems, must be proportionally energetic and effective. Technophiles may dismiss his entire effort based upon the book's weaknesses, and consequently miss out on the valuable gist of his viewpoint. Similarly, impatient readers in our age of limited attention spans, might not make it through the aforesaid tangents, and likewise miss out.
The issues that he discusses should be raised more often and more loudly, with broader acceptance and expansion of the debate and its importance. Otherwise, we will continue our robotic march deeper into a future that is controlled more by soulless devices, and less by skeptical humans. If we fail completely to change course, we may be saddled with a life that is intolerable to the human spirit.
Devices of the Soul is an insightful, disturbing, imperfect, eloquent, and important contribution to what may ultimately become the most critical debate in the intensifying conflict between humans and our technological creations: Humans may survive, but will our humanity?
Michael J. Ross is a Web developer, freelance writer, and the editor of PristinePlanet.com's free newsletter. Dan Sisson is an adjunct professor at Eastern Washington University, where he has taught technology courses for the past eight years; he is an authority on Thomas Jefferson, is author of The American Revolution of 1800, and is currently building and living in a replica of Monticello.
You can purchase Devices of the Soul from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
I think it would break it down to two possibilities: upper class those who can fix the robots or create new models, lower class those who cannot.
Even before mass computerization the fact is that our lives are still being run according to the Industrial Revolution model. Our schooling and sleep patterns have been molded to fit into a model which is no longer being used. Or so I've heard.
Chicken fried butter sticks? Do
By the time this child makes the transition from high school to college, he will be required to accept a curriculum that too often lacks meaning and content, that fails to allow him to satisfy his own curiosity about the challenges facing humanity, and is, moreover, expensive and will likely lead to indebtedness. Nothing new here. This is how it was prior to the net. The next stage in the individual's life is integration into the mature world of the computerized economy, i.e., when he becomes a "stakeholder." He accepts a world that does away with human values and subordinates him to "market values." Furthermore, he is bound to lose his sense of privacy...
Efficiency is nearly the sole criterion by which modern corporations make decisions, and it is no accident that these two ideas, human values versus efficiency, are mutually exclusive. This is a false distiction. Modern corporations - with the exception of those that we have foolishly allowed to become monopolies - have to be efficient at pleasing the customer. We customers still have our 'human values', and corporations will cater to those values or go broke.
There is nothing new here, really. There has always been a tension between those who learned a new technology and those who were late learning it. Whether it is the wheel, or the inclined plane, or whatever the latest tech is, the question is who is master.
All of this technology is suppose to make our lives easier. It used to be all one had to do was go out and hunt for some food a couple ours a day (if even that). Nowadays, we work 8+ hours a day just to make ends meet.
It is my theory that new technology will not make life easier, but instead will increase our demands. It's the same way computer games will always be limited by hardware. Whenever we increase the hardware of a computer, we add more to the game to increase the demand for better hardware. It becomes (has always been) a vicious cycle.
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The fact is that these devices are only part of the wider picture, of creating mass democracy into a democracy of domesticated consumers. people dont buy things any long because they NEED them, but rather because they want them, and often they want only because theyre deemed disireable by society, or because they see purchasing goods as a way of self expression.
6 5191428174
there is a very good explination of the social engineering tactics used by world leaders utilizing Freudian theories of the psyche that was broadcasted by the bbc, which is entitled, the century of the self.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-26376353
Just another damn luddite. "Oh noes, teh machines are eating our SOULS! We should hearken back to the ways of the indians, for surely they were one with teh nature."
Just once I want someone to really take into account what it would mean for society to actually do the stuff they think it should do. Let's drop out of the rat race, lets stop burdening our children with science and math, and just teach them art and the kind of philosophy that has no practical applications.
So what happens? Lets say our technology doesn't decline, but just stays absolutely steady: All the crap we've been trying to outrun for years will catch right up. Global warming? Yup. Anti-biotic resistant bacteria? Yup. Shortage of clean water? Yup. Shortage of resources? Yup. To stay where we are, we have to push through some of this crap...It's a real race to see whether we can beat it before it beats us.
Alternative? Drop our tech back a couple hundred years, go agrarian. We've only picked up, eh, around 5 billion people since then...Better for the world if they starve, right? At least they won't have to be soulless users of math.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't feel soulless. Life's a grind, sure, but tell me that hasn't always been the case. Regardless of whether or not I kill a deer today, I'm still going to have dinner; that's a hell of a lot more than most of my ancestors could say. My kid may die of something but it's a hell of a lot less likely than it was even 50 years ago. I travel as far back and forth to work as a strong hiker could do in a day, and it doesn't even take me an hour.
Sure, this isn't the best of times (we hope), but it's not the worst either. We're still solving problems. Air quality sucks, but it doesn't suck half as bad as it did 50 years ago. Computers are still ramping up at a rate that is practically obscene when viewed from an objective distance. Think about the tech 50 years ago; most of us have calculators that crush that...And the tech is still in it's infancy. We're still seeking something better for ourselves, the growth of our minds and our societies and the glory of our species.
Or we could just give up. Go back to being hunter gatherers...If that's even possible.
I know which road I'd choose.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I can do my laundry the old way, by washing them manually on a washing board, and then hanging them to dry on the clothlines. Using my washing machine and dryer makes that process go 10x faster. There are examples of this everywhere. Yet we're still working full time and still have the same amount of leisure time as people did in the past (roughly). Why? Cause we want more. We want bigger houses and better cars. And we're competing with each other. Some $500k house in LA is an artificially high price, considering the real costs of building the house. Its high because everyone wants it and anyone buying it knows they can sell it for more later.
I live close to a large beautiful park. In recent years I have noticed a large percentage of people in the park talking on cellphones. I was amazed. I go to the park to get away from such stuff. You are truly a technological slave if you can't even get away for a few minutes of R&R without being bothered.
"The stuff you own ends up owning you." -Tyler Durden
"Look, nobody takes this more seriously than me. That condo was my life okay? I loved every stick of furniture in that place. That was not just a bunch of stuff that got destroyed, it was me!" -Narrator
Charming man. I wish I had a daughter so I could forbid her to marry one. -Arthur Dent
Well ok, there is no formal fallacy like this...though some lines of reasoning which are both false and popular get labeled "fallacy" anyway. Like, for example, the "gambler's fallacy."
When we compare unpleasant aspects of modern life to pleasant aspects of an idealized historical life, we find the latter preferable to the former. However, this comparison is always made after specific key variables are eliminated (the pleasant aspects of modern life, and the unpleasand aspects of historical life).
I'd say this game is rigged.
Hypothesis one (original theory): This gives us mroe time to spend with family
Hypothesis two (their reply): Despite this time saved, we seem to have it sucked away. It must be that the devices are EVIL. SATAN SPAWN EVIL. Cue Manical laughter now.
Hypothesis three (reasonable, intelligent, but not panicy enough to get a book):
About 50-100 years ago, we settled down to a reasonable ratio of time spent with family vs. work. Any thing that saves us time will NOT increase the time we spend with one or the other. Instead we will keep the same ratio of time spent working vs time spent with our family. Work is not evil, it is a GOOD thing. We either enjoy it, or we enjoy what it lets us earn. We like more money more than the time with our family, becaue we can use the money to have higher quality time (or we just don't like our family.)
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
The very people who have the biggest problem with consumption are debtors, who are, by definition, not wealthy. Aside from their own abilities, their net worth is often zero or negative.
The issue with this is that many people are apparently not taught financial prudence, moderation or frugality by anyone, and then, the economy fails to acutely punish their manic spending as harshly as it would have in the past (death, prison, slavery, etc). Instead, we must all bear the burden of the massive consumer debt. Tragedy of the commons, you know. It is this, not directly technology, which allows people to be as gluttonous as they are.
Philosophy is a pasttime of the wealthy. Technological and social progress have created a society where almost everybody is, compared to the helots of ancient times, wealthy. Quite ordinary people now find themselves dealing with detritus produced by a life of unexamined wealth and consumption.
Actually most philosophy before the 21st century was done by people who took vows of poverty and sat in caves or monasteries and thought about these problems. Wikipedia is down right now or I'd link you to eastern and western philosophers.
The whole concept of Buddhism is that suffering comes from wanting things... Not the lack of them. So basically they had plenty of time to think about things because they either took donations of food or grew their own gardens. Not because they had wealthy patrons or slaves to sustain them. They simply stopped playing the universal rat race and accepted poverty. Same thing happened in European Monasteries but with Christian overtone (St Thomas Aquinas?)
Now when we get into modern times did we get non-religious philosophy like Voltaire (well he wasn't modern but might as well have been), Kafka, Nietzsche, and everyone else who took different views on materialism etc.
Simply saying having more luxuries now is the key reason for these philosophies is not true, but rather stems from the human fear of change.
Personally, I think that there nothing philosophical about what the author is saying other that it matches a luddite world view that fears having too much time on their hands and change to their personal life.
In that respect people have been saying these since the automated looms replaced workers in the 1800's.
Personally, I think technology can be used both ways... To repress humanity and to expand it. However, we haven't had many Buddhist monks contemplate this since it is a rather recent thing, but from what I have gathered... Transhumanist and Buddhist ideals aren't that far away from each other.
They both seek to desire to rise about their limitations of being human.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Perhaps the economy doesn't punish them because the economy is based upon the consumption provided by debt? Do we not use the Consumer Spending Index as a large market factor? Isn't most of our economy based on people having disposable income? What would happen if people did not use debt to prop up the economy?
You obviously are not an economist. :)
What's the prize?