Machines of Loving Grace

Are computing machines our friends or our enemies? After living with them as an average American for almost 60 years as of 2018, it is interesting to reflect on how attitudes change, and where we are today.

Source: Marcus Felsman’s English Blog

Today’s 60-to-70 somethings didn’t grow up with computers. Instead, computers arrived like something out of science fiction during our tumultuous  teenage years. The computers of that time were accessed through punch cards or bulky cathode ray terminals (CRTs) in reality. But the Star Trek TV series and the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey” depicted fully functional speech recognition, artificial intelligence (AI), food processors, and handheld communicators.

Funny thing, we have now built all those Star Trek devices (except for the transporter beam). Children and younger adults now take them for granted. The 60-to-70 years old can only imagine what it must be like to grow up surrounded by computers at an early age; our children had Windows, Macs, and eventually cell phones. Our grand children have enjoyed smartphones and personal digital assistants almost from infancy, and now have AI with Alexa, Echo, Cortana, and Siri.

Ambivalence

Humans and their technologies have transformed much of Earth into a machine world, but we still have a love/hate relationship with machines.

At least one megacorp has its roots in a Silicon Valley hippie: Steve Jobs. Please read this page from Walter Isaacson’s book on Jobs to learn a bit about how, in the 1960s and early 1970s, attitudes changed from dismissing computing as a tool of Big Brother to embracing it as a symbol of individual empowerment.

Today, debates rage anew over AI, privacy, surveillance, censorship and technological monopolies. As a sixty-something, I know what people in my age group (and perhaps my children’s) conflicted-ly think on these issues, but frankly have only vague ideas on how younger millennials view them. That is great fodder for future posts! For now, check out Isaacson’s bit of history and Richard’s Brautigan’s poem “All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace.”

“I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.”

I’m with you Richard. Bless you, and RIP.

Looking Ahead

With all the discontent out there about government surveillance and intrusive advertising, have we returned to a negative view of computing?

Perhaps, on balance, we have a more nuanced view of computing that acknowledges any technology is neutral and can be used for either good or bad purposes. And some of the current Internet’s detractors are learning to love a new model – based on blockchains – that I’ll write about in another post on the topic of Decentralization!