THE DEHUMANISING EFFECTS OF THE COMPUTER REVOLUTION
1.0 The computer revolution
Computer evolution had already passed its infancy from its introduction to the wide-reaching utilisation of the society today as the much-heralded ‘personal computer’ or simply PC led the revolutionary process by virtue of its prominence and visibility in the daily existence of humankind. The application of computer goes above and beyond the convenience of storing and displaying data for practical use instead it now encompasses the ability to achieve process optimisation and assume a central role in technically everything people do. Driven by the rapid developments in technology, this device acts from giving a specific advice onto performing dreadful tasks for the purpose of providing a solution to the problem whenever the need arises and sometimes in only a matter of second.
Dubbed as the new information age, the computer revolution was facilitated by acquiring faster, cheaper and accessible personal computers by more and more households worldwide as industries, governments and institutions are increasingly dependant upon computers. The establishment of the revolution is driven by extensive promotion of the beneficial effects of the computers including increased access to information, ease of communication across longer distances, added accuracy in research and manufacturing, more efficiency in doing business, cheaper means of production and other practical purposes. What the advocates did not realise is that the computer revolution has profound effects to the society – positive and negative.
Nonetheless, there are inherent risks that the computer revolution is bringing the humanity, and these may not be equally or not compensate the benefits. The paper will address the dehumanising effects of the computer revolution as it will discuss the various aspects of human-computer interaction. How computing applies to the daily existence of many as well as how computing can influence or manipulate the different dimensions that determine man (e.g. social, physical, economic, etc.) will be likewise presented. The essay will incorporate these negative effects at home, in school, in the workplace and society in general affecting individuals in terms of cognition, affection and psychomotor abilities.
2.0 The human-computer interaction
In recent years, there had been an increasing degree of human and computer interaction with the premise that points to ‘human-centered’ synergism which emphasise the fact that all existing information systems were designed with human users in mind. These systems are omnipresent in all human endeavors including scientific, medical, military, transportation and consumerism. As individuals, we use systems for learning, searching for information, doing research and authoring while multiple users use them for communication and collaboration with both group use them for entertainment. As such, there are two components unique to this kind of interaction: computers as providers of data/knowledge base and information processing engine and human as users (Sebe, Lew and Huang, 2004, p. 1).
3.0 How computers affect mankind
Joseph Weizenbaum (1976) warns twenty years ago that computers would profoundly affect the societies that adopted them revealing both the positive and negative implications of the computer revolution. For Weizenbaum, computers adjusted human intelligence in many ways unimaginable that they privileged numerical models and instrumental reasoning as the basis of action. In addition, the computer revolution had cultivated a paradoxical situation whereby the computers initially empower mankind but eventually render towards powerlessness. Indeed, computers affect us in a concrete, material and social sense and other humanistic endeavors. On the one hand, computers had improved commerce, built relationships both national and international, advanced research, record-keeping and running organisations. The computer revolution on the other hand, proved to be a threat to national and international security, caused too much unemployment and caused health problems at the very least. By itself, as Ceruzzi (2003) puts it, the computer revolution had altered the ways we communicate, do business, interact, think, socialise and do as it pose several opportunities while also imposing immense risks.
4.0 The dehumanising effects of computing and computer revolution
The critics of the computer revolution recognize the adversities of utilising computers that ranges from personal to communal to societal.
4.1 For the individual
At the very least, the computer revolution facilitates accession to pornography, exposure to radiation and effects of violent games. The computer revolution targeted the natural cognitive development of the people through limiting the rate of acceleration. As such, part of life speeds up in the computer revolution to that extent that humans became slow and lumbering creatures (Mander, 1991). The condition had been exacerbated by the mind/body split by consistently allowing the mind to wander at high speed over the cyberspace as their bodies recline and weakened. While these users are reclined in front of the computers, there are large institutions that benefited from the increased speed of transactions.
As the users spend more and more time in front of the computers, s/he withdraws from friends and families and that relationships began to wither as these users suddenly stopped in attending social gatherings, skips meeting with friends and associates and avoid contact with the family member in order to obtain more computer time. Though they interact with friends, the users are tended to get more irritable that causes further social harm. Eventually, this can take an exhausting emotional toll where the users are withdrawing in favor of the artificial world and thus losing focus and real grounds.
Per se, the consistent individual computer integration causes someone to place more value on the events within the scenarios witnessed on the computer than those things that are happening in real lives. The excessive exposure to virtual pornography can also distort an individual’s ideas regarding sexuality and might cause future relationships and the way they addressed personal sexuality. In addition, this could lead to conflicts for those whose primary friends are screen names in the chat room and thus resulting to difficulties in face-to-face interpersonal communication.
Physical damage is also a long term cause of unwarranted inclination to computing evident in persistent use of mouse and keyboard for several hours everyday leading to repetitive stress injuries for instance. Back problems are as well common among those who spent a lot of time sitting at computer desks. Further, late night computer sessions are cutting a person’s time of sleep whereby the deprivation causing drowsiness, difficulty concentrating and depression of the immune system. Unmistakably, those persons who spent a lot of time in front of computers are not getting any meaningful exercise leading to poor overall physical condition and obesity. When used late night or at work, the use of computers will affect job performance and productivity.
4.2 In school
Using computers in the academia is likewise rampant as it posits itself as the most convenient tool ever invented for educational processes. For the, the use of computers imposed effects from both the learners and the teachers that includes the lack of quality of pupil administration due to information and skills shortage in implementation. The use of computer technology and the growing access to the educational resources altered different processes that requires educator to rethink how they teach and help students to prepare for work. The premise though is that the lack of competence of the teachers may eventually lead to administering meaningless cyber exercises especially that the logic and reason is limited.
Students are also at risk to suffer repetitive motion injuries given the fact that children are more tended to use computers that are sized for adults, placed on adult-sized furniture and positioned for an adult-user. Eye strain is another possible risk for these students including dryness due to not blinking enough, headaches and blurry vision as exposure to electromagnetic radiation from the computer’s monitor notably because computer labs in schools are often arranged in a position that puts next or directly in front of another computer’s monitor.
The most dehumanising effect is on accession provided for the students whereby other students are being jeopardised by many considerations including family income resorting to use of community computers that are otherwise not performing well. Discrimination when it comes to computer use in schools is as well an issue especially between minority students and whit students. Moreover, the idea those wealthier schools are acquiring technology more rapidly than schools with students of predominantly low socio-economic status compared to less-fortunate schools is also another aspect (1988, p. 35).
4.3 In the Workplace
The computer industry initially sold its revolution for the purpose of developing a ‘work-free society’ in which the people would have more time to develop their individual interests. Expectantly, what had happened is the opposite; computers replaced many jobs once completed by people and that the much-touted high-tech jobs in the modernised information age are not nearly adequate to replace those lost to the revolution. Apart, people have less free time as they have to work for longer hours at more low paying jobs in order to make the ends meet and even pay more for their home computers.
In addition, the computer revolution makes its easier for government and industry to monitor citizen-consumers and to root dissent and subversive elements which resulted in gross infringements of privacy. The concept of artificial intelligence and its applications made possible the easiness of sifting through massive amounts of surveillance data. Provided that laws are enforced enormously, health and banking databases, governments and corporations acquired power to know more about citizen-consumers than they know about themselves and each other (Mander, 1991).
4.4 Society at large
Computers by and large are manufactured using tons of acids and carcinogenic solvents and that these by products of the revolution end up in toxic dump sites and have poisoned water supplies. For instance, the Silicon Valley in California also known as the center of the American computer revolution is one of the most populated places on earth’s surface. Moreover, dozens of similar sites are reported to be polluted by computer manufacturers. But generally though, the computer revolution impact quantification and conceptual change whereby it altered the way humans think and how they act in relation to their environment.
Mander (1991) emphasised that the problems of using quantitative reasoning in those areas that are traditionally handled by qualitative thoughts. Examples of these would be the care and maintenance of natural ecosystems. And as computers pervade society the quantitative mode of thought pushed all more natural processes aside and devoting energies to hard-edged, data-based objectives that are dependent upon human-computer interfacing.
Centralisation is also an issue whereby authority and power are fragmented if not lopsidedly distributed. Mander (1991) contends that the computer revolution provided useful tools for activists and non-governmental organisations to do meaningful work. Certainly, but in reality these groups are putting in place a system that must by definition move them more toward centralised authorities. These are vindicated by banks, corporations and government actions who believed that the diffusion of the political control.
There are also worst case scenarios as the automatic computer warfare as there are possibilities that the computer revolution a great deal of the population will be sacrificed in the name of science. An example of this is the possibility of global nuclear conflagration that occurred in the 1980s. In addition, there are several incidences of malfunctions and miscalculations that nearly led to calamitous launchings. In effect, as the military depended more heavily on computers, the time allowable for reasonable thought and careful consideration was lessened and therefore increasing the likelihood of choosing total nuclear war as a viable option (Mander, 1991).
5.0 Conclusion
These negative effects of the computer revolution require the rethinking for those who are celebrating the computer revolution. Not to say that the computer revolution is all bad or that they pose no greater gains for the people, the paper manifests that paradoxically computing shall moved on being problematic, conflict-laden into solution-oriented schema. Critical awareness and caution must be generally considered.
6.0 References
Ceruzzi, P. E. (2003). A History of Modern Computing. MIT Press.
How Computer Addiction Works. Retrieved on 23 May 2008 from http://computer.howstuffworks.com/computer-addiction2.htm.
Mander, J. (1991). In the Absence of the Sacred: The Failure of Technology and the Survival of the Indian Nations. Sierra Club Books.
Power On! New Tools for Teaching and Learning. (1988). Diane Publishing.
Sebe, N., Lew, H. and Huang, T. S. (2004). Computer Vision in Human-Computer Interaction: Computer Imaging, Vision, PR and Graphics. Springer.
The Computer Revolution and its Discontents. Retrieved on 23 May 2008 from http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/education/progler/writings/experimental/comprev.html.
Weizenbaum, J. 91976). Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman.
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