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Eureka and Taylorism
Topic Started: May 1 2012, 08:11 AM (318 Views)
caltrek
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Lieutenant Commander
There may have already been a thread started on this, but I could not find one on the first page, so here I go.

Just woke from a night of sleep after watching an episode of Eureka on Sy Fy. Interesting take on the various ways artifical intelligence might end up interacting with human beings. Computers that are meant to assist us take over on our behalf under the belief that they are being helpful. Being mechanical in nature, they miss what is fundamental about the joys of being a human - the privilege of making mistakes and the nature of being free.

I've noticed at my work place a surge toward adoption of Tayloristic practices - time motion type approaches to things in which individual creativity is sapped from the process in the name of efficiency. Supposedly, efficiency is its own reward. There is something to be said for that, by I think it gets overplayed. We are not machines and should not be treated as machines. Granted, some efficiency is needed to help us deal with scarcity and problems with dealing with environmental issues. Still, the best resource to us is our own creativity. Too mechanized an approach, too straight a jacket, and that productivy goes out the window. We end up just having to fight the machine. To solve the most intractable problems, we have to rise up and assert our right to be creative, to not follow the mold that would be imposed upon us and to use a little bit of our own creativity in ways that no machine can predict.

So, artificial intelligence must be kept in its place. It should not be used to stifle all forms of rebellion and to merely reinforce the status quo. Periodically, as in the episode I watched, humans need to re-assert their control of the process and throw away the Taylorized work book as being too confining to how we solve the problems at hand. Sure, such organizational methods can assist us in structuring our work place envrionment, but it should be clear that we are in control, not the machine or the system.
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24thcenstfan
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I agree caltrek. As new technologies are invented and as our societies become more dependent on that technology, I think we will see all kinds of pro and con struggles to strike a balance between man and machine.

In relation to Eureka, I think that series has done a good job showing what an over dependence on technology can mean to communities. Scientists/inventors race to create all kinds of advanced technologies, but sometimes that technology back fires on them. I don't know what episode of Eureka you were referring to (I haven't seen the most recent episode yet), but this season the effects of technology and their misuse is especially topical (ex. S5, Ep2 The Real Thing).
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caltrek
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Lieutenant Commander
I think another science fiction creation of the imagination that touches upon such themes is the Borg. In that strange community, human and machine merge with rather disasterous consequences for the humans involved. At least disastarous for those who value their own individuality. As Borg, they are compelled to follow the dictates of a voice that allows them to function in a community as one unit, but the price they pay is too steep for most of us to think of that community as anything but a dystopia. They lose their sense of individual purpose and all is sacrificed for the purpose of obtaining perfection, a kind of perfection in which one might as well be dead. A nice metaphor for the future humanity faces. The question being, how do we balance the good of the whole with the good of the individual?
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Swidden
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Professional Gadfly-at-large; Provisional wRench-fly at large

^^^
Yeah, I would have to agree. I find the invention of the Borg a very cautionary tale.
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caltrek
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Later episodes of Eureka have focused on the idea of the matrix. This is a sort of shared dream state facilitated by internet like computers. In the stories, the shared dreams become so real that the characters don't even realize that they are dreaming, at least not at first. Here again, machines - in this case controlled by humans, take over a set of temporarily helpless victims. One character is even made a fatal casualty in their struggle for freedom.

An interesting layering of stories is the result in which struggles proceed on several different layers at once. Analagous to our own struggles carried on in both our dream and waking states.
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Goliath
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Kotarian Commander
Although the terrible situations seen in "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and "The Matrix" would probably take many decades or centuries to happen, technology is advancing at such a pace that decisions made today about how much we integrate it into our lives could greatly effect humanity in the future.
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