Jobs: Part 2: Disintermediation

Whatever happened to all the travel agents, filling station attendants, and encyclopedia salesmen? It turns out they were middlemen – intermediaries between you and what you wanted. Therefore, you can say that, when we found ways to do their jobs more directly, they were “disintermediated.”

These days, it is ever-more-common to “cut out the middleman.” You book your own travel, pump your own gas, and easily search for information about any subject that interests you by using Internet search engines. The Encyclopedia Britannica has stopped printing paper volumes. Voluntary curators and editors contribute articles to Wikipedia, a free on-line encyclopedia with an increasingly solid reputation. Tesla Motors is working toward their vision of bypassing dealerships to sell electric automobiles directly to the public.

Is Big Data Dangerous?

I have been giving away personal data all my life. In 1959, when I first filled out a coupon in the back of a comic book, I started getting related offers in the mail. It is no surprise that computers make keeping these lists easier and that social networks collect the life details we share. “Big data” computer algorithms now connect the mass of breadcrumbs we leave behind, making assumptions about our habits and preferences.

For many years, marketers and advertisers have been collecting and using information about us and we have been cheerfully cooperating. Subscribe to Bride magazine and wedding service companies will know your intentions before your boyfriend does. Today, free apps on our cell phones offer us remarkable services and we eagerly install and use them. However, do not be surprised that, “If the app is free, you are the product.”

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,

Science Fiction: A Marriage Made in Heaven

Information and comments on the Science Fiction story:
A Marriage Made in Heaven

from the book: Life Will Get You in the End:
Short stories by David Satterlee

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Life Will Get You in the End:
Short Stories by David Satterlee

Science fiction. A personal favorite that echos back to my time running big computers. The ship's systems have never had to be cold-booted since commissioning... until the chief engineer drops a wrench into the ship's central power buss. Oops.

A Marriage Made in Heaven

The colony ship “Akasha” was in serious trouble. Of course, it was continuing on its trajectory, but it was only a few shift rotations from becoming colder than the two dozen pairs of cryogenic stasis chambers it carried. Something terrible, and terribly unexpected, had happened. Akasha was too far into the ether to be helped… and too far out to even signal her status. 

Everybody and everything on board was instantaneously at risk. The impossible had happened; all power generators, and all systems, had gone offline together when the power distribution buss failed. Twenty-four mated pairs of colonists might never know what had happened. But the captain, the officers, and every member of the crew sure did. Dave had happened. And, it fell to Dave to save them all… if he could.

I’m so sorry that I dropped that wrench into your power trunk distribution venue. You’ve been a very good ship. I’ve tried to serve you well. Your internal systems reactor never deserved the kind of power surge that I caused by my carelessness. I’ve repaired and reset everything I can find. I know that I’ve taken for granted your excellent environmentals; they were over spec’d and I appreciate that, but we’re starting to have trouble rebreathing our own air. This whole systems reboot really needs to work. I trust you. I love you. I’ll hold my mind with you the whole way. Let’s do it.

Dave, the ship’s senior engineer sat alone; he had asked the rest of the department crew to leave so that he could concentrate, without distraction, on what he now had to do. Dave closed his eyes, drew a deep breath, centered his mind, opened his eyes again, and reconnected local battery backup power to the Engineering Department’s OmniSoft 2040(c) central command console. Dedicated indicator lights flashed in a series as the xBIOS pre-boot self-test routine executed. The GUI surface flashed, went dark again, and presented the words: “Execute authorization pass-gesture to begin.” The engineer, realizing he had forgotten to do so, began breathing again.

Thank you. Dave made his level-ZED pass-gesture and leaned back slightly to watch the boot-log scroll across his supplemental debug display. It was necessary to watch the process with a certain intense detachment. It was okay to blink and it was even okay to glance away, but it tempted fate to be indifferent. There is something about major systems that expect and respond positively to your undivided attention during start-up. On the other hand, you can’t presumptuously let yourself indulge definite expectations. Major systems are also especially sensitive to