Can't remember now where I stumbled across a reference to #TheComputerizedSociety #Pelican #book (I know it was on here!) published in 1973 (authored in 1969) but it's proving to be a fascinating read on so many levels.
The authors ask: "We all know that the science-fiction world in which no one needs to work is unreal, but just how likely is it that office work will be done at home in the 1980s or that we shall shop by computerized television? Will our private lives really be under constant surveillance? And will data banks take all the spontaneity out of life?"
#TheComputerizedSociety #Pelican #book #RetroComputing #Society #Ethics #Law #Surveillance #AI #Power
The first aspect that jumps out strongly is the entrenched sexism:
A la #GreysonPerry, default man: "As the computer age gathers momentum the ‘man in the street’ is very likely going to be bewildered by it all, particularly in the next twenty years because general education about computers and their usage is largely unavailable today — a lack of foresight we shall pay for."
Real work is done by men: "As we commented in Chapter 12 much man-power would be saved if, when we applied for an automobile registration — or any other kind of licence — we did so at a terminal..." and "The applications for which the professional man may use his terminal are in many cases of much greater complexity and often involve programming."
#TheComputerizedSociety #Pelican #book #RetroComputing #Society #Ethics #Law #Surveillance #AI #Power #Sexism
Most insidious of all in that regard is that when examples are shown, men get things correct and women get things wrong.
There's an inexplicable gender change in the example below. Is it to set up "If she failed to write this all down and wants it repeated, she presses <keys>"?
Sounds innocuous, maybe the result of an editing slip, but check out this old promotional video of male and female programmers using EDSAC. Who makes the mistake?
#TheComputerizedSociety #Pelican #book #RetroComputing #Society #Ethics #Law #Surveillance #AI #Power #Sexism #PostOfficeScandal #EntrenchedThinking #StatusQuo
So far I've only read the chapter "Bewilderment", wondering if it managed to predict our current media world of mis- and dis-information. It didn't, but is interesting in its own right, especially for this aside, which I found frankly shocking in light of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal:
"...we are also getting to the point at which it may soon be impossible to catch computerised errors at all. The Post Office, for instance, has long refused, as a matter of principle, to admit that it can get [telephone] accounts wrong, let alone that it does..."
Those words would have been written sometime prior to 1969. Nothing changed in the British Post Office managements' perception of their own infallibility in the intervening HALF CENTURY.
#TheComputerizedSociety #Pelican #book #RetroComputing #Society #Ethics #Law #Surveillance #AI #Power
The table of contents is tantalising:
Check out these previews of the book "The Computerized Society", 1970: https://yakshimash.britomartis.bysh.me/nextcloud/index.php/s/yd7AwLTLzErt4fb
If there's interest, I may share more.
@fluidlogic You might want to also read Gordon R. Dickson's award-winning short story from 1965, "Computers Don't Argue". A darkly-comic tragedy about computerised bureacracy.
@shelldozer here it is!
Gordon R. Dickson, Computers Don't Argue, 1965
@fluidlogic
Reminds me of a book I read ~30 years ago. It was non-fiction about robots and AI, but I don't remember the details.
What I remember is the author describing his wife (in a weird voyeuristic scene) as a robot, because she is able to "maintain herself" (meaning that she was able to go to the restroom by herself...).
The book was from the 80's, but even then you didn't have to be that sexist. SICP is also from the 80's, and Eva Lu Ator is clearly a "she".