Computer Appreciation Even If It Takes Your Job?
Recently, I found out about the monthly book sale at Sandton Library. I made my way there on the last day of the October sale, and after struggling to find parking outside Sandton City and on the advice of the mall security, I begrudgingly resigned myself to parking inside the mall. Nevertheless, I bought several books and one of them is the subject of this post - Computer Appreciation by Thomas Frederick (T.F) Fry published in 1975. Computer Appreciation is essentially about computer fundamentals, which includes their hardware and software, how computers process information and their societal impact.
In the book’s first chapter, T.F. Fry has a section on the social effects of adoption of computers. Similar to now, he touches on the rise in fear of computers being used for ‘big brother’ style surveillance as well as the concern that computers would make many workers redundant due to its performance in semi-skilled work. This post will focus on the latter fear, I might make another post on the importance of privacy in the age of big data and sophisticated engagement algorithms.
What I found interesting reading his thoughts on the societal effects of computers, besides the same fears still being stoked 50+ years later, was the solution/suggestion on how to address the labour challenge back then. He mentions how the introduction of computers had opened up new areas of work for both users and manufacturers - users could establish new roles in the computer department for their newly redundant staff.
Unfortunately, it would not have been possible to create new roles for all workers who were made redundant. T.F. Fry then suggests that in those scenarios, companies should facilitate employee re-skilling or up-skilling with the goal of moving these affected parties to other areas of work within the organization. Most importantly, they should stop all recruitment of new employees until all people disturbed by the introduction of computers have been re-settled.
50 years on, we are currently going through a technology shift with the proliferation of generative artificial Intelligence tools. As techno-evangelists continue to preach for the adoption of AI in the workforce and with companies seduced by the promise of increased operational efficiency and reduced operational costs marketed to them by some AI organisations, T.F. Fry’s book couldn't be more topical.
As recurring news comes through of layoffs at major tech companies, graduate unemployment and with the cause being attributed to adoption of AI (this attribution is contested), one has to hope that policymakers are working on strong and enforceable regulations to ensure that the social cohesion brought on by meaningful labour is not overlooked because of the ballooning bottom line. Policymakers should adopt a Human-First approach that has been adopted by some organisations that use and build AI - where AI is seen as a tool to augment human labour and the human experience and not solely as a tool to derive the most amount of profit even at the expense of the human element.
Images used in cover art
1. Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash
2. Photo by Ernie Journeys on Unsplash
3. Photo byIgor Omilaev on Unsplash