Computers: Servants or Masters?

Computers help us to be (or appear to be) smarter. Of course, they (1) help us to count and calculate faster. They also (2) expand our capacity to remember. Even when they seem to make us lazy about having to memorize facts, there is no denying they give us rapid access to what we, and the rest of humanity, have recorded. Further, digital technology helps us to rapidly (3) find, connect to and communicate with distant people. The equivalent of Dick Tracy’s wrist communicator is now widely available. My goodness.

All three of the above are examples of “external human augmentation.” My former career was heavily involved with all manner of computers, from micro-controllers in instruments to IBM mainframes. Now, in an era of “big data,” computers are combing through unimaginably large pools of information to predict business opportunities, invent undiscovered chemical reactions and recognize patterns of weather, disease, and crime. Computers predict the kinds of advertisements that will make us pause and look. They can build custom products to our specifications and translate any web page into dozens of languages.

In 1986, I discovered the article, “Computing as a Tool for Human Augmentation” by W. J. Doherty and W. G. Pope in the IBM Systems Journal. They pointed out that,