What if automation makes our lives easier and worse?: A Review of Nicholas Carr’s The Glass Cage
by Dan Krutka
Before starting the post, I have a couple Civics of Technology reminders:
Phil Nichols is leading a book club discussion of Ruth Schwartz Cohen’s 1983 classic, “More Work for Mother” on Tuesday, July 26th from 8-10pm EST. Register on our Events page to join this discussion or future book clubs.
Our first annual Civics of Technology virtual conference is only 10 days away! We can’t wait! Please be sure to register on the 2022 Conference page. We will be adding Zoom links to the schedule and sending out passwords to the Zoom meetings just before the conference begins.
Several years ago I was a passenger in a car with several friends on our way to an event in Fort Worth, an area with which we all were only somewhat familiar. At one point, my friend who was driving was not entirely sure whether he was on the right street. We all debated which streets offered the best route, but I impatiently shrugged, “why don’t you just put the address in Maps and follow the directions?” It was obvious that my friend took pride in knowing places and he wanted to figure it out. I also knew that he was a skilled navigator. Still, my immediate reaction was frustration that he hadn’t just pulled up the automated directions. I valued the efficiency of travel over anything else. I also chose machine judgment over that of my friend.
I reflected back on this experience as I read Nicholas Carr’s 2014 book, “The Glass Cage: Automation and Us” (Don’t ask me why there are several different names for this book, but each title includes “The Glass” Cage” and they seem to be the same book). Nicholas Carr’s work—he is best known for The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains—embodies an ecological lens that serves as one of our primary influences (along with critical lenses) at the Civics of Technology project. Ecological lenses generally recognize that technologies have complex and unintended effects that can profoundly shift the way we think and structure our societies. While there are many influences, Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman are often credited with advancing these ideas (Join us as Michelle Ciccone leads a book club examining feminist extensions of McLuhan’s theories). However, I particularly appreciate the deep examples and evidence (psychological and neurological) woven through Carr’s storytelling in his books.
Carr’s book leads with the example of how automation has affected airplane pilots. He contends that early automation benefitted pilots because it freed them up from constant maneuvering of levers to attend to other important aspects of flying. He quotes pilot and poet Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1939) as saying, “The machine which at first blush seems a means of isolating man from the great problems of nature, actually plunges him more deeply into them” (see our quote activity). In a sense, pilots wore their planes. However, as automation became increasingly complex it increasingly stripped pilots of their skills and eventually transformed their work into that of computer observers. The machines fly the plane as pilots watch. Early automation broadened pilot’s latitude, but more complex computers constrained their craft.
Technological progress does not always result in social progress. Many pilots today have not only lost the joy of flying and being in interaction with the machine, but their skills have deteriorated in ways that make them less capable pilots who can struggle to respond to emergencies when needed. He even discusses research suggesting that the yielding of navigation to computers could lead to dementia as humans no longer engage our brains in the cognitive mapping of places. Carr makes similar arguments concerning how automation has deteriorated the skills of doctors, architects, and we can infer, educators who have turned to technologies for aspects of their craft. What questions might educators ask of ourselves and our students?
Since our five critical questions were inspired by a 1998 Neil Postman talk, it should come as little surprise that Carr’s book addresses all of our five critical questions:
What does society give up for the benefits of automation?
Who is harmed and who benefits from automation?
What does automation need?
What are the unintended or unexpected changes caused by automation?
Why is it difficult to imagine our world without automation?
Carr’s book also challenges us to return to what seems to be another fundamental question we should be asking in schools: What relationship do we want with technology? This is a question we will return to more and more in this project. Ryan Smits is leading a session at our upcoming conference titled “unfolding a smartphone” for which he and I developed curriculum (soon to be released) that encourages students to question whether their apps—such as the Clock, Maps, or Messaging apps—are better than older technologies or ways of telling time, wayfinding, or communicating. It’s also a question Jacob Pleasants, Phil Nichols, and I have considered when thinking about what “technology education” curriculum should look like. Check back for more curriculum that helps us ask this question with students.
Carr’s thesis is that we need human-centered design and decision-making to ensure increasingly complex computer automation isn’t taking away the types of work that encourage human flourishing. Companies constantly tell us that new technologies can complete our tasks so we can do more important things, but what if the tasks they’re replacing bring us joy or fulfillment? Carr points out that many of us actually enjoy the work or our jobs, the work of driving, and the work of wayfinding more than we realize. So, next time, I’ll join my friend in the work of finding our way to our destination. Maybe the journey really is just as important as the destination.
Reference
Carr, N. (2014). The glass cage: Automation and us. WW Norton & Co. 289 pages. Purchasing options. ISBN-13: 978-0393351637.