Machines

I've been called, among other things, a Luddite.  The Luddites were early 19th Century British opponents of automation or, at least, the coming of factories.  They were known to destroy machines, which they thought would lead to the loss of jobs, the advent of "feel like a number."

I don't have a cell phone.  I eschew snow blowers, leaf blowers, lawn-mowing tractors, power tools such a screw drivers, etc.  Obviously I use computers and enjoy mine.

Yet I still marvel at machines.  Well, I still marvel at some machines.  A couple of weeks ago, Karen and I flew to Las Vegas with Michael to visit Matt and Linda.  Imagine, as I did, in a matter of several hours, we were almost 2,200 miles from our origin!  We flew at about 600 mph at more than 5 miles in the sky.  Contrast that to life about 150 or so years ago.  Most likely, most folks never traveled much beyond 40 or 50 miles from the place of their birth.  A mere century ago, automobiles and airplanes were in their infancies.  Henry Ford's Model T was just beginning to "put the nation on wheels."  Wilbur Wright, in 1908, astounded, even overwhelmed the French (who thought their own early forays into flight were paramount) by flying a plane for just about two minutes!

And consider this computer and the Internet.  I have friends (OK, smart guy, acquaintances) all over the US and the world.  Some are in California, some Massachusetts.  Some are in the US South and others in foreign nations, such as Australia.  I can contact them in merely moments thanks to e-mail.

As I emphasized to my history students last week, "Remember, people didn't always live like we do today."  Indeed, I remember our first television set and, later, our first color set.  The first calculator I saw cost upwards of $75.  When the Warren Consolidated School District became the first school district in the state to purchase a computer, it paid about $2 million.  Within a matter of years, that machine couldn't do the work of a computer that could sit on one'd desk.

Still, there's something I don't care for about machines.  "New" isn't synonymous with "better."  More modern isn't better.  I rue the day, coming for certain, that most Thanksgiving turkeys will be cooked in microwaves.  How people will miss the five or six hours of that heavenly aroma filling the house that roasting turkeys brings.  Is that checkout computer that speeds up the process in the grocery store still worth it when it freezes and rings up a bill that was $27 too high?  (Yep, that happened to me recently.  Fortunately I saw the original amount before the computer froze and reset, with the higher amount.  I did manage to pay, but go to the customer service area where the prices were re-entered and the actual, smaller figure was reached--again.)

All this brings me to virtual classes, internet/online learning.  Of course there's a place for it, often called MOOCs, the acronym whose meaning escapes me right now.  But MOOCs involve classes without physical classrooms and no direct physical contact between student and teacher.  They have set curricula and "teach" via a single format to, potentially, million of students in virtual classrooms.

I think this reflects our increasing willingness to replace humans with machines.  (Hmmm...maybe those Luddites were on to something.)  If not replacing humans, at least human activity, sometimes the most basic of activities.  I've written before about my apprehension of such online education, the pitfalls it necessarily brings.  How long until teaching is done by robots?  Seriously,.....  If we can see the growth of such online courses, with students sometimes hundreds, even thousands of miles apart, unable to clearly see each others' grimaces, gleams, etc., how much longer until we just, to save money (among other things), let robots, that is, machines, teach?

Far-fetched you say?  Hmmm.  We have already begun the process in human communication.  Note, well, for instance, this blog.  We e-mail folks, often saying things that we wouldn't normally say face-to-face.  (Those things might be good or, increasingly, bad.)  Note Skype (sp?).  I suppose it's cool to communicate, "face-to-face," this way--but will it ever replace a good old-fashioned hug?  (And, some of you well know, I'm not a hugger--only for a few select folks.  It's the trendiness and ubiquity of hugging that bothers me.)  Oh?  Note, too, how often we forgo calling someone and send the much, much more impersonal text message.  The convenience trumps the loss of human contact.

And aren't workers asked to become more machine-like?  Don't their evaluations often depend on, well, machine-like results?  Again using something with which I am familiar, note the increasing trend toward teacher evaluations, touted by politicians and corporate-types, that rely heavily on test results.  (I just finished a lengthy e-mail with some college mates, extolling my many terrific professors at Amherst.  To summarize, much of what they taught me wasn't measurable by any test, not essay, not multiple-choice, etc.  That's not to say I think tests in education are useless; hardly.  I am saying that great--or not-so-great--teachers should not be judged on results measured by tests.)

I, for one, do not look forward to the robotification of human beings......