This is a fascinating
article (excerpts below), delivered as a speech in 1990. It is self-indicting since I am
an “Information Architect”, and this is the world I live in on a daily basis,
and promote professionally. However, it
is good to step back for a critical consideration of what it is I, and we, are
doing to ourselves and our neighbor.
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The great English playwright and social philosopher George
Bernard Shaw once remarked that all professions are conspiracies against
the common folk. He meant that those who belong to elite trades -physicians,
lawyers, teachers, and scientists - protect their special status by
creating vocabularies that are incomprehensible to the general public. …
I have heard many experts in computer technology speak
about the advantages that computers will bring. With [few] exception ... I have never heard anyone speak seriously
and comprehensively about the disadvantages of computer technology, which strikes
me as odd, and makes me wonder if the profession is hiding something
important. That is to say, what seems to be lacking among computer experts
is a sense of technological modesty.
…
In the case of computer technology, there can be no
disputing that the computer has increased the power of large-scale
organizations like military establishments or airline companies or banks or tax
collecting agencies. And it is equally clear that the computer is now indispensable
to high-level researchers in physics and other natural sciences. But to what
extent has computer technology been an advantage to the masses of people? …These
people have had their private matters made more accessible to powerful
institutions. They are more easily tracked and controlled; they are
subjected to more examinations, and are increasingly mystified by the decisions
made about them. They are more often reduced to mere numerical objects. They
are being buried by junk mail. They are easy targets for advertising agencies
and political organizations. The schools teach their children to operate computerized
systems instead of teaching things that are more valuable to children. In a
word, almost nothing happens to the losers that they need, which is why they
are losers. …
Technology always has unforeseen consequences, and it is not
always clear, at the beginning, who or what will win, and who or what will
lose. But what started out as a
liberating stream has turned into a deluge of chaos. If I may take my own
country as an example, here is what we are faced with: In America, there are
260,000 billboards; 11,520 newspapers; 11,556 periodicals; 27,000 video outlets
for renting tapes; 362 million TV sets; and over 400 million radios. There are 40,000
new book titles published every year (300,000 world-wide) and every day in
America 41 million photographs are taken, and just for the record, over 60
billion pieces of advertising junk mail come into our mail boxes every year.
Everything from telegraphy and photography in the 19th century to the silicon
chip in the twentieth has amplified the din of information, until matters have
reached such proportions today that for the average person, information no
longer has any relation to the solution of problems.
The tie between information and action has been severed.
Information is now a commodity that can be bought and sold, or used as a form
of entertainment, or worn like a garment to enhance one's status. It comes
indiscriminately, directed at no one in particular, disconnected from
usefulness; we are glutted with information, drowning in information, have no
control over it, don't know what to do with it.
And there are two reasons we do not know what to do with it.
First, … we no longer have a coherent conception of ourselves, and our
universe, and our relation to one another and our world. We no longer know,
as the Middle Ages did, where we come from, and where we are going, or why.
That is, we don't know what information is relevant, and what information is
irrelevant to our lives. Second, we have directed all of our energies and
intelligence to inventing machinery that does nothing but increase the supply
of information. As a consequence,
our defenses against information glut have broken down; our information immune
system is inoperable. We don't know how to filter it out; we don't know how to
reduce it; we don't know to use it. …
Through the computer, the heralds say, we will make
education better, religion better, politics better, our minds better - best of
all, ourselves better. This is, of course, nonsense, and only the young or the
ignorant or the foolish could believe it. I said a moment ago that
computers are not to blame for this. And that is true, at least in the sense
that we do not blame an elephant for its huge appetite or a stone for being
hard or a cloud for hiding the sun. That is their nature, and we expect
nothing different from them. But the computer has a nature, as well. True, it
is only a machine but a machinedesigned to manipulate and generate information.
That is what computers do, and therefore they have an agenda and an
unmistakable message.
The message is that through more and more information,
more conveniently packaged, more swiftly delivered, we will find solutions to
our problems. …
Here is what Henry David Thoreau told us: “All our
inventions are but improved means to an unimproved end.” Here is what Goethe told us: “One should,
each day, try to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and,
if possible, speak a few reasonable words.”
And here is what Socrates told us: “The unexamined life is not worth
living.” And here is what the prophet
Micah told us: “What does the Lord require of thee but to do justly, and to
love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God?”… There is no escaping
ourselves. The human dilemma is as it
has always been, and we solve nothing fundamental by cloaking ourselves in
technological glory.
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From the text of a speech delivered to the German
Informatics Society, 11 Oct 1990 in Stuttgart https://w2.eff.org/Net_culture/Criticisms/informing_ourselves_to_death.paper
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