Book of the Week: Devices of the Soul, part 3: Re-enfleshing the machine

We continue our excerpts from Steve Talbott’s new book. Today’s theme: ubiquitous computing.


One way to express an ideal of ubiquitous computing is to say, “Anything we do that can be automated should be automated.” It’s a principle that appeals to the common sense of many people today, and complements the notion that machines can unburden us of the more tedious and mechanized work, leaving us free to occupy ourselves with “higher” and more “human”
tasks.

But, in the first place, this rule obscures the truth that nothing we do can be automated, not even when we are merely adding two plus two. [See note on adding two plus two in the initial note about this book.]

If the first problem with this rule is that nothing we do can be automated, the second problem is that everything can be automated. That is, once you equate mechanical activity with human activity in the superficial manner just indicated, there’s no line separating things that can be automated from those that cannot. So our rule provides no guidance whatever.

Further, the more you automate, the more you tend to reduce the affected contexts to the terms of your automation, so that the next “higher” activity looks more and more like an automatic one that should be handed over to a machine. When, finally, the supervisor is supervising only machines, there’s no reason for the supervisor himself not to become a
machine….

It’s where automation has not already destroyed the meaning of the low-level work that we discover how high-level it can really be. The organic farmer may choose not to abandon his occasional manual hoeing – not because he is a hopeless romantic, but because there
is satisfaction in the simple rhythms, good health in the exercise, and essential knowledge of soil and crop conditions in the observations made along the way. What will provide these benefits when he resides in a sealed, air-conditioned cab fifteen feet off the ground?…

I suppose the sum of the matter is that the restoration of human context entails a gesture exactly opposite to the one expressed in “if it can be automated, it should be.” It’s more like “if it can be re-enfleshed, it should be.” This rule seems to me healthier than the purely negative
call to “stop automation and technical innovation.” To focus merely on stopping automation is already to have accepted that the machine, rather than our own journey of self-transformation, is the decisive shaper of our future. Yes, we urgently need to find the right place for our
machines, but we can do so only by finding the right place for ourselves.

As long as these two movements – to automate and to re-enflesh – are held in balance, we’re probably okay. We should automate only where we can, out of our inner resources, re-enliven. For example, we should substitute written notes and email for face-to-face exchanges only so far as we have learned the higher and more demanding art of revivifying the written word so that it reveals the other person as deeply as possible and gives us something of his presence.

(Abridged from “The Ideal of Ubiquitous Technology”, chapter 18 of Devices of the Soul by Steve Talbott.)


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